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Aren't we supposed to be in the best economy ever thanks to Joe Biden
and his inflation reduction act coupled with Bidenomics?
'Credit Card Defaults Spike to Highest Level Since Aftermath of 2008
Financial Crisis'
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https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/4287144/posts>
<
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2024/12/30/credit-card-defaults-spike-to-highest-level-since-aftermath-of-2008-financial-crisis/>
'American credit card defaults have risen to the highest levels since
the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis as consumers grapple with
years of high inflation.
Credit card lenders wrote off $46 billion in delinquent loan balances in
the first three quarters of 2024, a 50 percent increase from the same
period last year. These forms of write-offs are are viewed as a highly monitored measure of loan distress.
This is the highest level since 2010, according to industry data
gathered by BankRegData.
Mark Zandi, the head of Moody’s Analytics, said, “High-income households are fine, but the bottom third of US consumers are tapped out. Their
savings rate right now is zero.”
The Financial Times wrote that, although banks do not have data for the
fourth quarter, there are worrying signs about the state of the American consumer:
The sharp rise in defaults is a sign of how consumers’ personal finances
are becoming increasingly stretched after years of high inflation, and
as the Federal Reserve has left borrowing costs at elevated levels.
Banks have yet to report their fourth-quarter numbers but the early
signs are that more consumers are falling significantly behind on what
they owe. Capital One, the US’s third-largest credit card lender, after JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup, recently said that as of November its
annualised credit card write-off rate, which is the percentage of its
overall loans that are marked as unrecoverable, hit 6.1 per cent, up
from 5.2 per cent a year ago.
Odysseas Papadimitriou, the head of consumer credit research firm
WalletHub, said, “Consumer spending power has been diminished.”
Americans left the coronavirus pandemic with large balances of cash,
buttressed by high levels of stimulus spending; however, credit card
balances started to soar in 2022 and 2023. The spike in American
consumer spending, along with supply chain shocks and excessive levels
of spending under President Joe Biden, led to high inflation.
In response, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates, thus boosting
credit card rates and other borrowing costs. Higher loan balances and
interest rates pushed Americans to pay $170 billion in interest in the
year prior from September 2024.
Many Americans have remained hopeful that the Federal Reserve would
slash interest rates, and lower borrowing costs as a result; however,
the Fed has forecast that the nation’s central bank may only reduce
interest rates by half a percentage point in 2025.
“Delinquencies are pointing to more pain ahead,” Papadimitriou
remarked.'
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