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Pastimes : Clown-Free Zone... sorry, no clowns allowed
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To: LLCF who wrote (108395)6/12/2001 10:49:45 PM
From: Mark Adams  Read Replies (1) of 436258
 
Consumer debt soared at an unexpectedly rapid 10.5% annual rate in February, according to the Federal Reserve.

I would presume they are using federalreserve.gov
which has been superseded by federalreserve.gov

Note that the most recent report has revised up Febs reading from 10.5 to 11.2. And the March reading is 5.7%. I'm a little surprised that they are using such 'old' data.

Note that retail sales were high in Feb, as retailers tried to flush out inventory. Higher energy costs could account for some of the blip, but you also have people buying winter coats 50% off at Montomery Wards going out of business sale.

NOW... to me one big worry, as I've said before, is that we've experienced a huge boom by any measure... and I would expect to see plenty of reserves socked away for the recession... yet everywhere I look people are MORE in debt than ever before [anecdotal... people I run into], and have more in the stock market, new cars and second homes than I've ever seen [these numbers are born out by % assets in stocks, average age of auto's and homes]. Even the 'bullish' numbers presented in articles I've read certainly don't show folks socking it away for any type of recession let along the type of recession I'm expecting... after all, the debt service numbers are near all time high, although 14.6% doesn't seem high to me.

The Debt to Networth chart I posted (you couldn't even gauge the increase in debt as it was swamped by financial assets gains) suffers from the flaw in that recent gains may be transient.

I disagree with your assertion that we've failed to save based on the Fed study that shows the bottom 80% of income earners have increased savings despite the apparent negative savings rate. I see that this study is getting wider press now. BondTalk, for example, published a link today.
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