Yes, but how many of those are articles pondering the number of times the word "stagflation" is used in other articles?

Not believing that the economy is good when GWB tells us so is the worst form of economic nihilism.

Jesus wept. Economic projection on the basis of the number of times a particular word appears in a Nexis search. This is almost as good as pretending that average hourly wage alone is a meaningful measure of income and standard of living.

You really have a hard time with "hypotheticals", don't you GOP? Kevin posed:

IF news cites really are a decent way of projecting economic performance, the news is not good.

[Emphasis added]

but....are news cites really are a decent way of projecting economic performance? is there any reason to think this is the case or is this just more of the kind of anecdotal economic analysis based on musing that i've come to expect over here? i love this blog for political stuff, but when you tread into economics with material like this i'm a bit less enthused.

Here's another one GOP:

Is not wanting to be seen shopping at Costco enough of an "important aspect" in a woman's life to justify 2 abortions?

If news cites really are a decent way of projecting economic performance, the news is not good.

If number of cites of "Brangelina" is any indication of economic strength, we're in for glory days!

Aye GOP. It's almost as bad as confusing causality and correlation when discussing the impact on the economy of tax policy.

All you lefties waiting for the economy to be bad enough to drown W, don't hold your breath. For sure, this economy is good for corporations, terrible for workers, who understand that. However, top line that MSM focus on is likely to be in the 2.5-3% range for quite some time, and will be billed as "healthy" growth. If I'm wrong, and economy slows to below that range, Fed will lower interest rates.

As for inflation, it's mostly direct & indirect effect of energy prices, not something the Fed is likely to act on by raising rates, since energy price inflation is primarily exogenous to the U.S. economy. So forget "stagflation." When we had that in the 1970s, inflation was double-digit & economy wasn't growing. This economy is a Rose Garden (yes, that one) by comparison.

The economy sucks. Period. People are being squeezed hard by energy and food prices. Nobody in Washington gives a shit. Not the politicians, or the elite journalists who don't have to worry about buying food or paying for the energy bills.

We need a revolt in this country.

But, if news cites really are a decent way of projecting political performance, the news may be good indeed.

As for inflation, it's mostly direct & indirect effect of energy prices

Given the swift appearance of "Don P." (posting as GOP) and Charlie/Cheney/Chuckles (posting as "Thomas," complete with the blockquote tags he imagines disguises his inimitible style) on this thread, one can only conclude that the Republicans are gravely concerned about the state of the economy and its impact on the November elections.

IF news cites of negative descriptors are indeed leading indicators of a failing economy, AND the US media uses those negative descriptors, THEN doesn't this prove the moonbats' paranoid theory that the media is objectively anti-American?

Juuuuust liiiiiike the use of negative decriptors in news stories about Iraq, which in fact cause the American -- excuse me, "coalition" -- mission there to fail.

Yes, the Republicans are almost as gravely concerned as we Dems are that the public won't believe 4.6% unemployment and a growing economy are not worse than the Great Depression.

4Q05 1.7% 1Q06 5.6% 2Q06 2.5% The effects of Katrina and low 4Q05 growth, and catch-up growth in 1Q06 are probably still frunning through the system. One month results do not make a trend.

Does [stagflation] the Nexis [stagflation] search string [stagflation] look only at [stagflation] major news sources, or [stagflation] does it dig deeper - into [stagflation] all forms of web content, like [stagflation] blog comments [stagflation]?

Then, could [stagflation] someone alter [stagflation] the content to optimize [stagflation] the search to their benefit?

Jesus wept.

That Jesus is a weird dude if such things make him cry.

I suspect that the 2.5% growth is buoyed by the massive public and private borrowing.

Eventually, those interest rates will rise. The fed can only do so much to hold back market forces, and when China decides to stop lending us money so cheaply we may see a serious increase in the governments ability to keep interest rates low.

If the Chinese (and others) stop investing heavily in U.S. savings bonds, not only do interest rates shoot up, slowing down economic growht, but the dollar devalues as well (inflation.)

So, eCAHNomics, today's economy does look better than at it's worst in the seventies. But, IMHO, the situation could get much, much worse before too long.

In any fair and just system of govenment, aWol and "Big Time" would have to resign.

We have entered "the golden doldrums" part of Bush's two terms.

Just you watch:

The first 6 years?

They will be known as the "platinum pollyanna years."

Everything Bush touches turns to shit.
He's got the Anti-midas touch.

Always:
Worse and worse and worse.
It is his only genius...

Just you watch...

But every article related to economy that has been posted here ever since Bush took office has the common theme the economy is in the tank. So are you now saying the economy is really going to tank?

"So, eCAHNomics, today's economy does look better than at it's worst in the seventies. But, IMHO, the situation could get much, much worse before too long."

Here's hoping the economy will finally tank!

But every article related to economy that has been posted here ever since Bush took office has the common theme the economy is in the tank.

Dow Jan. 19 2001 10587
Dow Today 11226 Annual Growth 1.09%

Nasdaq Jan 19 2001 2291
Nasdaq Today 2088 Annual Growth -1.7%

Seems like Kevin has been right all along.

Seems to me you get one official utterance of stagflation and . . . oh whatever, who cares

The approach of counting news reports is a method that has correctly predicted 20 of the last 2 recessions.

Have you tried this with references to the rapture?

Kevin admits that the July 2006 NEXIS count is "projected" -- does it factor in the number of news stories prompted by this very thread in the next few days?

If I were a Bush supporter, I would not tout the performance of the economy as one of his achievements, as the facts will make me look like a fool.

There are so many other fantastic achievments of Bush to crow about, so why worry about one tiny problem?

You know, instead of tea leaves and entrails, what would be interesting is a discussion of, say, theoretical models that describe leading factors in stagflation, the evidence for and against these models, and their application to the current factual situation.

I mean, it seems more appropriate for a serious 21st century discussion than variations of "speak the name of the devil and he will appear".

Well, presuming the next President is a Democrat, I'm very glad it's happening now. Last time it happened, Carter got left holding the bag for Nixon and Rumsfeld*. (And, to be fair, for LBJ.)
This time at least, the Republicans are reaping their own reward for blowing up the money supply.

* The same Rumsfeld who is now in charge of the Pentagon was in charge of Nixon's price-fixing scheme.

Yet, the AP newswire has a story that says:

Dow rallies on economic news:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060728/ap_on_bi_st_ma_re/wall_street_79

cmdicely: speak the name of the devil and he will appear

References to the devil are off the chart on Nexis.

I keep getting: "This search has been interrupted because it will return more than 1,000 documents. Please edit your search and try again."

References to the rapture have increased 6 out of the last 7 months and most frighteningly, references to the devils number skyrocketed last month.

Kevin,

How about a month-by-month chart of NEXIS hits on "recession" plotted against NBER declared recessions? That should indicate if the press is a good indicator and whether it leads or lags.

Tentakles

If I were a Bush supporter, I would not tout the performance of the economy as one of his achievements, as the facts will make me look like a fool.

I dunno. By that standard, the economy -- bad as it is -- isn't (yet) the glaring fuck-up that pretty much every other Bush effort has turned into. But I've got a feeling that the last two years of the Bush term might actually make us nostalgic for the preceding six, which is a horrifying thing to imagine....

"References to the rapture have increased 6 out of the last 7 months and most frighteningly, references to the devils number skyrocketed last month."

Last month did include June 6, 2006 afterall.

oh

Yes, the Republicans are almost as gravely concerned as we Dems are that the public won't believe 4.6% unemployment and a growing economy are not worse than the Great Depression.

Posted by: Gregory on July 28, 2006 at 2:11 PM | PERMALINK M

Ah, my doppleganger is back! Interesting that he/she/it should surface on this thread. In any case, I'm delighted at him/her/it waving the white flag of admission that he/she/it has no recourse other than the most blatant dishonesty. But then, we knew that.

In any case, the disconnect between the public perception of the economy and the way the government chooses to report unemployment is indeed the Republicans' problem.

Of course, you gotta love the growing economy. Why, the down is over 11,000! Again! And, again. And, again. And, again...

Interesting that this article is about stagflation. I was watching CNBC yesterday; Larry Kudlow and one other guy were on repeating over and over, "There is NO stagflation", "Maria, there are not any signs of stagflation on the horizon." Kudlow kept going on and on about the 'Bush boom'and how it's the 'greatest story never told'. I seriously thought he was high.

Roubini is correct, not right. Jounalism 101.

You think stagflation is an effect of a rise in oil/transportation costs and long-term oil price jumps?

Just hinking here, 'cause every time in my lifetime we've had staglflation, we had a year of higher than normal oil prices and oil prices didn't cool.

But every article related to economy that has been posted here ever since Bush took office has the common theme the economy is in the tank.

Or, rather, every article related to the economy that has been posted here since Bush took office has the common theme that Kevin thinks he can spin it as saying that the economy is in the tank (or, at least, that it's headed that way).

Still, given that Kevin's job here is more about promoting the Democrats and attacking the Republicans than it is about fair-minded and impartial political analysis, this isn't really surprising.

4.6% of the total population lost a job in the last six eighteen months.

Unemployment doesn't count those unemployed, merely those who were recently employed. It doesn't track the number of people who convert out of that number, or the portion of the population which is working - or for how much money.

If everyone was working for minimum wage, would the economy be worse, or better?

Unemployment doesn't count those unemployed, merely those who were recently employed.

No, it counts both short-term and long-term unemployed. The U.S. unemployment rate is much lower than the unemployment rates in most of Europe.

Hey, I'm on board but: "Nexis" is not a source. "Lexis-Nexis" is a brand name (registered trademark) and NOT a specific resource; it's a whole bunch o' different databases. To cite "Nexis" is like citing "Kleenex." When you don't say WHICH of the various Lexis-Nexis (TM) products you're using, it's nonsense. E.g., my university subscribes to "Lexis-Nexis(TM) Academic" and "Lexis-Nexis (TM) Congressional" and "Lexis-Nexis(TM) statistical" each of which means something totally different.

Stagflation being mentioned more often? Fuck yeah. "Lexis-Nexis(TM) says . . . " is piss poor methodology.

Funk and Wagnall's shows no indication that George Bush is popular.

- Pissed off lieberrian

GOP, aside from the obvious, that no single measure by itself will tell the whole story, please explain what you mean by the following :

"This is almost as good as pretending that average hourly wage alone is a meaningful measure of income and standard of living."

Ralph,

I don't know how to explain it to you any more clearly. The statement seems pretty clear to me. Average hourly wage alone is not a meaningful measure of income or standard of living.

GOP

What is ?

to be quite precise, GOP, the US unemployment rate does not count "discouraged" workers, while the european rates do. there is a gap but it's not nearly as large as you think it is.

meanwhile, i've been predicting stagflation as the logical outcome of bush league economics sine 2004, and i can assure everyone who wonders about the validity of counting measures that for quite a while, i was the only person i could find who feared such an outcome. gradually, over time, more and more have noticed the potential.

in fact, i don't regard it as potential at all: i regard it as here. stagflation (more properly, what i've labelled as stagflation lite) does not require '70s-style inflation numbers. what it requires is a scenario in which inflation is increasing and crimping economic growth.

specifically, we have a situation where more or less 80% of american households have seen somewhere between little and no real wage growth over the past 5 years; we have a situation where household debt is at historic highs (and household equity at historic lows, for those who want to point to the fact that more people own homes than once did, therefore inflating household debt by increased mortgage debt); we have a situation where we have fallen from north of 65% of workers being covered by health insurance in 2000 and south of 60% being covered by health insurance in 2005; and where job growth has continued to be limited by corporate cost control on the compensation front being used to offset increased costs elsewhere.

meanwhile, the TIPS market has gradually inched up to 2.5% inflationary expectations over the next 10 years from south of 2.0% when i first started talking stagflation, which at the margin influences all kinds of economic activity for the worse.

so while the economy as a whole isn't quite in stagflation lite, for many people, we are....

What is what?

ralph, gop really doesn't know what he's talking about here, since no one would pretend that "average" wage means anything: you can average me and shaquille o'neill and it won't prove a thing!

what gop meant to talk about was median wage, and in a small sense, gop is correct: median wage is only one indicator. however, it's an important indicator, because short of truly odd circumstances, if the median isn't increasing, than most people's income isn't increasing.

there is no one single indicator that will tell us the entire story of something as vast and comples as the american economy. however, among the indicators that we can use are: real growth in hourly wage; median household income; distribution of income growth; jobs-to-working-age-population ratio; level of household debt; level of consumer credit; level of private investment; level of job growth; types of jobs growing; and so on.

when you look at all of them, you draw the kinds of conlusions that i posted about at 6:05: that for most people, the economy is not doing well, which is why poll after poll shows that people do not give bush credit for the economy despite GDP growth that would seem, on the face of it, to suggest that we are doing reasonably well.

Howard,

to be quite precise, GOP, the US unemployment rate does not count "discouraged" workers, while the european rates do.

No they don't.

there is a gap but it's not nearly as large as you think it is.

Yes it is. In a recent discussion of this issue, I linked to some of the academic literature from the Bureau of Labor Statistics on the effects of differences in the way unemployment is counted in the U.S. and Europe. Did you see it? The BLS found that these effects generally amount to, at most, a fraction of a percentage point. Unemployment in Europe is much, much higher than it is in the U.S. This is hardly surprising given Europe's highly-taxed, highly-regulated labor market, which strongly discourages employers from hiring.

meanwhile, i've been predicting stagflation as the logical outcome of bush league economics sine 2004,

Have you? As they say, even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

howard,

ralph, gop really doesn't know what he's talking about here,

Well, you don't know what you're talking about.

since no one would pretend that "average" wage means anything:

Tell Kevin. He's the one who cited average hourly wage as if it were a meaningful indicator of income and standard of living.

what gop meant to talk about was median wage,

No, I meant to talk about exactly what I did talk about: average hourly wage.

there is no one single indicator that will tell us the entire story of something as vast and comples as the american economy. however, among the indicators that we can use are: real growth in hourly wage; median household income; distribution of income growth; jobs-to-working-age-population ratio; level of household debt; level of consumer credit; level of private investment; level of job growth; types of jobs growing; and so on. when you look at all of them, you draw the kinds of conlusions that i posted about at 6:05: that for most people, the economy is not doing well,

No, you don't find that. Show me your evidence, using the economic statistics you list above or any others, that "for most people, the economy is not doing well." Don't just assert, substantiate. Of course, the claim itself is so vague (what constitutes "doing well?") that it's hardly meaningful anyway.

gop, you are welcome to recite your BLS evidence. i've looked at this matter any number of times, and typically the differential is on the order of 2% between how we and the europeans count unemployment, but i'm happy to learn otherwise.

now, as for the rest: one can look high and low in kevin's posting for the words "average income" and not find them, so i don't know what you're talking about. however, to the extent that kevin used "average income" as an indicator, then he was wrong too. median is a much more valuable indicator, and if you didn't mean to use it, you should have.

now, life is short, so i'm not going to link my little heart out in a comments section just becuase you don't keep up, but i'll summarize for you (and i'm basically talking about the 19 quarters of growth since the end of the recession, since you want clarity): real hourly wage growth has been somewhere (depending upon what month we're in) between miniscule and nonexistent; median household income has been stagnant; distribution of income growth has been primarily concentrated among upper, and particularly the extreme upper income brackets; jobs to working age population has been very slowly improving after the bottom fell out during the recession but still hasn't come near its peaks in the '90s; level of household debt is at historic highs; level of consumer credit is at historic highs; level of private investment has been below highs achieved in the '80s and '90s; level of job growth has been quite weak for a recovery, well below the norm of every previous post-world war ii expansion; the types of jobs that have been growing have been construction (good news), government (so-so news), restaurant (not good news); and so on.

in short, i know precisely what i'm talking about; were i you, btw, i'd aspire to be right twice a day. it would be an improvement.

PS, gop, as for "doing well," like the supreme court and pornography, most of us know what "doing well" economically means for ourselves, and most of us are telling pollsters negative things about the state of the economy. that will have to do as a definition, although basically, i would say doing well means, first and foremost, real after-tax income growth.

howard,

gop, you are welcome to recite your BLS evidence. i've looked at this matter any number of times, and typically the differential is on the order of 2% between how we and the europeans count unemployment, but i'm happy to learn otherwise.

Here is the BLS study International unemployment rates: how comparable are they?. The study found that applying U.S. concepts to European unemployment data yielded a downward adjustment of a mere 0.4 of a percentage point. This is only a small fraction of the difference in unadjusted rates, which is why your claim that the gap is "not nearly as large as you think it is" is completely false.

And here is a BLS document comparing the 2006 unemployment rates, adjusted for U.S. concepts, in the U.S. and the four largest European economies. As you can see, the unemployment rate in every one of those economies is significantly higher than in the U.S. In France and Germany, the unemployment rate is almost twice as high as it is in the U.S.

From previous experience, I've learned not to trust any empirical economic claim you make. Your posts are full of unsubstantiated economic claims, and when you are challenged to support them, or when I check them myself, I usually find that your claim is just factually incorrect. That is why everyone should just completely disregard your claims unless you substantiate them with links to supporting data. Basically, you just seem to be a left-wing ideologue who thinks he can make up facts and figures out of thin air.

I screwed up the hyperlink for the first study. Here is the corrected link: International unemployment rates: how comparable are they?

howard,
How about real after-tax total benefits?

If not, why.

birkel, sure, i agree that real benefits is a legitimate indicator (hence my "and so on"). the primary benefit, of course, is health care, and as i noted above, this is a benefit that now applies to fewer than 60% of american workers even though its cost is going up, but yes, it's part of a full understanding.

gop, my sweet, i appreciate the link and i'll spend some time perusing the 18-pager this weekend, so let me, for the moment, withdraw my remarks on comparative unemployment until i've looked at what you've provided.

as for other data, i have literally no idea what you are talking about: you're welcome to point out errors of mine when you find them, but actually, i do most of my posting on matters economic on a variety of economics sites, where i reference the same kinds of data that, when i talk about economic matters here i use, and i can't ever recall being called "usually factually incorrect."

perhaps you're confusing my disdain for your politics with factual error?

howard,

level of household debt is at historic highs

I'll pick just this one example of a "fact" you appear to have made up out of thin air. Although, of course, it's hard to know what "level of household debt" is supposed to mean exactly.

Here is a Census Bureau table showing Household Assets and Liabilities from 1990 to 2004. As you can see, household net worth (total assets minus total liabilities) increased significantly each year between 2002 and 2004, and has been much higher every year between 2001 and 2004 than it was in 1995. It was slightly higher in 2000 than 2004, thanks to the stock market boom of the late 1990s, preceding the crash in 2000, but just barely.

howard,

gop, my sweet, i appreciate the link and i'll spend some time perusing the 18-pager this weekend,

You don't need to, dear heart*. I summarized the relevant finding for you: Applying U.S. concepts to European unemployment data yielded a downward adjustment of a mere 0.4 of a percentage point. You can find this clearly stated in the conclusion of the paper.

*Another thing I've noticed about you, apart from the torrent of unsourced, unsubstantiated empirical claims that fill your posts and that usually turn out to be factually incorrect, is that you start up with this "my sweet" nonsense whenever someone starts providing actual economic data demonstrating that your claims are false. I guess it must be a giveaway that you're getting flustered.

howard,

...where i reference the same kinds of data that ...

Ha ha ha ha ha! You haven't "referenced" any data. You rarely if ever do. You just make unsubstantiated, unsourced factual claims that usually turn out to be false. My theory is that you pick this stuff up from reading left-wing websites, uncritically accept that it's true because it confirms your political prejudices and preconceptions, and uncritically regurgitate it on blogs like this without ever bothering to do even the most cursory fact-checking.

GOP, perhaps you might read me more carefully before you start accusing me of errors if your 7:28 is an example.

did i say anything about household net worth? level of household debt means precisely what the words say: the indebtedness of the american household. i made a particular point, at 6:05, that certainly a critical factor inflating household debt was that more people own homes, thereby pushing up mortgage debt (and pushing down household equity as a percentage of housing values - the last number i recall seeing for that was 58%).

that's why i specifically move on to the question of credit card debt, because it gets us away from the impact of housing, which only addresses roughly 70% of american households, whereas credit cards are more widespread and a greater reflection of daily behaviors (and yes, i understand that there may be an influencing factor on credit cards that people build up miles by using credit cards whereas once they used cash: there have been some interesting studies on that matter).

but really, what is so hard to understand about household debt?

gop, mon cheri: you really don't read me that carefully. i start using terms like "my sweet" and "mon cheri" with people that i have strong disagreements with as a way of indicating that i'm enjoying the give-and-take.

that said, my leading sources of economic data are those famous left-wing websites, the wall street journal and barron's.

your paper, by the way, dates to 2000, so the adjustment that it figures then may or may not still be applicable in 2006. anyhow, reading the conclusion doesn't, in fact, provide me any understanding, which is what i'm looking for.

meanwhile, one still waits, longingly, to see where kevin used the term "average income" in this posting. i'm sure a data-rich feller like you can point it out....

PS. as a further point: i like levels of debt rather than household net worth as an indicator for a couple of reasons. first off, whether the value of stocks or houses or bonds goes up or down, the debt is there. second off, the concentration of household wealth is so extreme (and here i happen to have a reference bookmarked, so it's easy to supply: http://www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/p70-88.pdf) that total household net worth can go up in aggregate even if most people's household net worth is a constant or even declines.

you can get some further insights into household debt here http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/housedebt/default.htm
and here
http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/oss/oss2/scfindex.html

of course, the federal reserve is another famous leftwing website!

You mean we can't borrow our way to prosperity?

Why if we just cut tax rates to zero, we will have infinite government tax collections, right? Saint Ronnie said it was so...

Another perspective on the possible outcome using Japan as a foreground:

http://www.prudentbear.com/archive_comm_article.asp?category=International+Perspective&content_idx=56455

I don't do politics even though we all live inside it. However, I hope some of you can talk about this serious issue without bashing the other side.

to be quite precise, GOP, the US unemployment rate does not count "discouraged" workers, while the european rates do. there is a gap but it's not nearly as large as you think it is.

The US does count discourages workers. It doesn't count those not looking for a job. If you are not looking for a job you are not unemployed. You are sitting on your ass doing nothing.

The gap between the US and Europe is actually wider than the numbers suggest and the US job market far healthier. Ask any Democratic Senator and they'll tell you why we need all of those immigrants. We have more jobs than people.

Our GDP growth have been much higher for a very long time. For all practical purposes the permanent growth trajectory of the US economy is DOUBLE that of Western Europe. Considering per capital GDP is already 40% higher in the US versus France and Germany this is a devastating trend which will compound more each year.

Add to that the signifcant rigidity in their labor markets due to government regulation and the lack of innovation due to high tax rates combined with monumental welfare state liabilities even further complicated by a demographic collapse and Europe looks headed for economic disaster.

Meanwhile the US has been averaging 4% GDP growth
since the supply-side tax cuts of 2003 while absorbing a tripling of Oil prices. That's a magnificant performance. The recent spike in inflation is troubling but largely due to the disaster with commodities. This will slow down and eventually reverse.

There's no stagflation. That's a political call and nothing more. It's not a very good one either. You think the French hate us now? Check it out when in 2020 USA per capita income is DOUBLE France levels.

howard,

did i say anything about household net worth?

You said "level of household debt." Household net worth is household assets minus household debts.

level of household debt means precisely what the words say: the indebtedness of the american household.

Mean household debt? Median household debt? Total household debt? What types of debt do you mean? All debt? Consumer debt? Financial debt? Debt in constant dollars? Debt in unadjusted dollars? Your term is so vague it's not clear what it means.

i made a particular point, at 6:05, that certainly a critical factor inflating household debt was that more people own homes, thereby pushing up mortgage debt ...

Again, this depends on how you are counting debt.

(and pushing down household equity as a percentage of housing values - the last number i recall seeing for that was 58%).

This claim is clearly false. "More homeowners" does not mean "lower household equity as a percentage of housing values." Obviously, such equity can increase dramatically even for recent homeowners if the value of their house increases sufficiently. Many people have experienced dramatic recent increases in the value of their homes, dramatically increasing their equity and allowing them to take out home equity loans that would previously have been unavailable to them.

that's why i specifically move on to the question of credit card debt, because it gets us away from the impact of housing, which only addresses roughly 70% of american households, whereas credit cards are more widespread and a greater reflection of daily behaviors (and yes, i understand that there may be an influencing factor on credit cards that people build up miles by using credit cards whereas once they used cash: there have been some interesting studies on that matter).

So what claim are you making about credit card debt? Be specific. Provide supporting links.

Howard,

your paper, by the way, dates to 2000, so the adjustment that it figures then may or may not still be applicable in 2006.

If you think you have evidence demonstrating that the way unemployment rates are calculated in the U.S. and Europe has changed since 2000 so as to render the study's findings no longer valid, present it. The table of BLS-adjusted unemployment rates I provided includes 2006, and the adjusted rates are very close to the official rates, just as they were at the time of the study, indicating that there has been little or no change.

meanwhile, one still waits, longingly, to see where kevin used the term "average income" in this posting.

He didn't. I'm not sure why you keep saying "average income" anyway. I said "average hourly wage." I said it repeatedly. And yet you keep pretending I said "average income." Are you capable of reading anything without screwing it up?

PS. as a further point: i like levels of debt rather than household net worth as an indicator for a couple of reasons.

As an indicator of what?.

first off, whether the value of stocks or houses or bonds goes up or down, the debt is there.

But the financial burden a debt represents depends crucially on the value of the debtor's assets, which likely include stocks, bonds, and housing, so focusing on debt alone without considering it in the context of assets is highly misleading. I'm sure you know this, but because ignoring assets suits your ideological purposes, you do it anyway.

second off, the concentration of household wealth is so extreme (and here i happen to have a reference bookmarked, so it's easy to supply: http://www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/p70-88.pdf) that total household net worth can go up in aggregate even if most people's household net worth is a constant or even declines.

It's hard to know what "so extreme" is supposed to mean. The distribution of wealth does not have to be particularly "extreme" in order for total household wealth (by which I assume you mean total household net worth--you're mixing different metrics again) to increase while median household net worth remains constant or declines, so it's hard to know what your point is here.

And I have no idea what you're trying to show with your Census Bureau URL. It's about household worth and assets in 1998 and 2000--six years ago. Are you trying to make a point about the Clinton Administration? Or what?

Do you have a clear, concise, specific, relevant claim to make about debt, backed up with a link to relevant data, or don't you? If you do, make it.

"We need a revolt in this country."

Yes, that will put a chicken in every pot.

GOP, you're really something else.

i provided a number of the indicators that i look at to get an understanding of the american economy at the household level in lieu of looking at any single factor. one of them was household debt.

you contend that i just make stuff up and, in order to demonstrate that i just make stuff up, you provided a citation concerning household net worth, which, if only i had been talking about household net worth, would have been interesting. yes, of course household net worth is assets minus liablities, but i focus on the liability side, for the simple reason that due to the concentration of household net worth (for which i provided you a cite, since you love 'em!), i don't believe that aggregate household net worth is that good an indicator. then you ask why did i provide a cite about household net worth! (and no, househodl "wealth" and "net worth" are not different metrics, although in both cases, the statistics we have available dont' take into account antiques, artwork, and stuff like that, which again tend to be highly concentrated) (and the reason i use the link i do is its the most thorough study i know of; if you have a better one, go for it, but what i like about this one is that it examines all households and doesn't just focus on the top)

meanwhile, sure it's possible for total household net worth to increase while the median stays constant even in a relatively tight distribution of household net worth. in that case, i'd be happy with net worth as an indicator; the reason i'm not is that net worth is extremely concentrated in america: in 1998, for instance, a year for which i happen to have data linked, the top 10% of households had 71% of net worth. in that context, your response that household net worth is up to my comment about household debt isn't really that useful. (http://www.osjspm.org/101_wealth.htm#3)

as for household debt, yes, you're right: aggregates of any sort can be misleading, but you're the one who went out and provided the particular aggregate data point, one which proved what i was saying. the two cites i gave you were intended to put household debt into some sort of context: the first looks at what amounts to the household's ability to support its debt by assessing debt payments as a percentage of household income (not looking good), the second is the single most granular assessment of household status from an economic perspective. then you ask why did i provide them!

Credit card debt is the kind of thing that i read about every month in the WS as the Fed provides updates. you can find the most recent here, broken down between revolving (increasing) and nonrevolving (declining): http://www.federalreserve.gov/Releases/G19/current/default.htm. you can follow the link to the historic data if you want to dig in deeper.

as for the unemployment rates, let's see: i asked for your cite. you provided it. i said it's 18 pages, i'll read it this weekend. you said it's all captured in the summary. i said since the report dates from 2000, the actual number in the summary may not be today's number. you chose to interpret this as an attack on the study's validity, although i'm not sure why. your second link only addressed a few countries in europe, not europe as a whole, and suggests comparability to 2000, but until i read the study and look more carefully at the second link, i'm not going to concede the point. that's called verification, something that you seem to approve of in other contexts.

now, how did we get into all of this? because my point is that people aren't stupid, that when they tell pollsters that they don't think the economy is doing as well as the GDP and aggregate income numbers would suggest, it's because for most people (let's call it roughly 80%, based on the BLS series that captures hourly earnings, which is generally reckoned to comprise 80% of workers) the economy isn't doing well.

my list of indicators are the kinds of things i look at to draw those conclusions. thus far, the one you've challenged is household debt, and in absolute terms, in aggregate, by your own cite, i'm correct. more fine-grained detail, like the first cite i gave you, reinforces the point: household debt service is at the highest level as a percentage of income for homeowners that it's been since the fed started to keep the data set in 1980; for renters, things are a little better, but since rent increases are one of the drivers in the current rise in cpi, that's probably not going to last.

as to the extent of home equity, i'm not going to repeat the considerable detail that you can find at several cites i will provide you in a moment, but the bottom line is that the aggregate loan-to-value (the inverse of the householder's equiity stake) has risen from roughly 32% in 1980 to to roughly 42% in 2004 (meaning that my recollection of 58% home equity is correct - waddya know?). you can find that info in graph 3, page 2, here: http://www.bis.org/publ/wpapers/cgfs26lehnert.pdf. you can find alan greenspan's extensive discussion (and he's more sanguine than i, although not without some concerns) here: http://www.federalreserve.gov/boardDocs/Speeches/2005/200509262/default.htm. your assumption that rising equity values offset the new home ownership is incorrect due to equity extraction in cash-out refinancing, home equity loans and lines of credit (what do you imagine happens when people take out home equity loans? why, their equity ownership in their house...declines! et voila!), and the increased number of jumbo mortgages, often without the traditional 20% down.

on the other hand, yes, i wrote an error in haste: you were referring to "average hourly wage." nonetheless, where in this post did kevin bring that up?

howard,

i provided a number of the indicators

No, you haven't provided any indicators. You just keep making unsubstantiated, unsourced assertions. How many times do we have to go over this? An assertion is not a fact. A claim is not a piece of data. If you have the data, produce it. If you don't have the data, stop pretending that you do.

you contend that i just make stuff up and, in order to demonstrate that i just make stuff up, you provided a citation concerning household net worth, which, if only i had been talking about household net worth, would have been interesting.

I didn't provide that cite to demonstrate that you are making things up. I provided it to show that, regardless of what is happening to household debt, household net worth has been rising.

yes, of course household net worth is assets minus liablities, but i focus on the liability side, for the simple reason that due to the concentration of household net worth (for which i provided you a cite, since you love 'em!), i don't believe that aggregate household net worth is that good an indicator.

Huh? Then why is aggregate household debt that good an indicator, either? If distribution is important to household net worth, then it's important to household debt too.

then you ask why did i provide a cite about household net worth!

No I asked why you provided a cite to a document addressing the situation in 2000, six years ago. What does that have to do with economic conditions now, or the economic trend during the Bush Administration?

(and no, househodl "wealth" and "net worth" are not different metrics,

Well, who knows? You keep using these vague, laymans terms, the meaning of which you do not describe, instead of citing actual economic metrics defined in the technical literature, and you provide no actual data to back up your claims. If you would actually make some clear assertion, and back it up with actual data, then we might have a basis for a serious debate or discussion.

But maybe you're--finally!--starting to try and do that.

howard,

meanwhile, sure it's possible for total household net worth to increase while the median stays constant even in a relatively tight distribution of household net worth.

Yes.

in that case, i'd be happy with net worth as an indicator; the reason i'm not is that net worth is extremely concentrated in america: in 1998, for instance, a year for which i happen to have data linked, the top 10% of households had 71% of net worth. in that context, your response that household net worth is up to my comment about household debt isn't really that useful.
(http://www.osjspm.org/101_wealth.htm#3)

Again, your link is to a distribution chart for the year 1998. 8 years ago. 2 years before Bush even became president. So I'm not sure why you think it's relevant to economic conditions now or economic changes over the past 5 or 6 years.

And of course, as I already said, if aggregate household net worth isn't particularly relevant, then neither is aggregate household debt.

the two cites i gave you were intended to put household debt into some sort of context: the first looks at what amounts to the household's ability to support its debt by assessing debt payments as a percentage of household income (not looking good),

I have no idea which "cite" you're talking about here. I'm not going to wade through your posts trying to match specific claims to specific URLS. It's your job to provide clear citations supporting clear claims. Where is your URL for the data that allegedly "looks at what amounts to the household's ability to support its debt by assessing debt payments as a percentage of household income?" In fact, rather than a URL, try providing a hyperlink, like I do.

Credit card debt is the kind of thing that i read about every month in the WS as the Fed provides updates. you can find the most recent here, broken down between revolving (increasing) and nonrevolving (declining): http://www.federalreserve.gov/Releases/G19/current/default.htm. you can follow the link to the historic data if you want to dig in deeper.

No, I don't want to "dig in deeper," I want you to support your claims.

The table you link to here contains data for aggregate consumer credit. It is hard to understand why you think this is very relevant given that you just claimed that aggregate net worth is not very relevant. Make up your mind. Either aggregates matter or they don't. You can't have it one way for net worth and another for credit.

In any case, it's still unclear what your point is. Are you claiming that rising aggregate consumer credit is a bad thing? If so, there is certainly no consensus amoung economists that that is true. As I already explained, the burden of a debt depends crucially on the debtor's assets, and assets have been increasing, along with net worth. People are borrowing more because they can secure those loans with increased assets from rising real estate values and other sources.

GOP, if i were looking for a serious debate/discussion on the economy, i wouldn't look for it here, and i certainly wouldn't look for it with someone who confuses blog comments with peer-reviewed economics papers where i might do things like proofread and footnote and worry about my precise phrasing and who claims (without any, how do you like to put it? data) to back it up, that all my comments are completely made up crap based on leftwing websites. (when i look for serious economic debate, there are loads of economic blogs where i can find it.)

now, let's try this one more time: when i write the words "i provided a number of the indicators," i mean just exactly what i said: these are the pieces of data that i look at when i want to have a sense of how the american economy is being experienced at the household level. i don't mean that my list of indicators is the data itself. If you want to insist that the term indicators must mean data, it's a free country, but as you like to say, asserting doesn't make it so.

if you now want to tell me that the reason you provided a link to show that household net worth is rising despite the rise in household debt, you picked a funny way of expressing that, dear heart, namely: "howard,

level of household debt is at historic highs

I'll pick just this one example of a 'fact' you appear to have made up out of thin air."

still, maybe at long last you're trying to grapple with what i'm saying instead of playing little pompous word games, so maybe now you understand why i bothered to go into some detail as to why i don't think household net worth in aggregate tells us much about most american households. see the logic? i figured that's what you had in mind, and it's an argument i don't agree with, so i attempted, preemptively, to respond to it, given that it's something i've looked at and thought about before.

and yes, cheri, household debt is every bit as important at a more granular level as household net worth is, which is why (huh, imagine this!), i provided you the two links i had handy about debt, namely the debt service to income link and the 2004 household survey that provides a fairly detailed examination of household conditions. (jeez, see how it works? if you don't play silly games you'll see that i'm actually consistent on this matter. you'll also discover that household net worth is far more concentrated than household debt, which is to say that 10% of american households do not have 70% of american household debt.)

you're the one who brought up the aggregate debt in the course of your link proving me a maker up of fact. see the difference?

apparently, though, you are still having trouble reading me: i have now explained to you that the link i provided on household net worth was the handy one, and the reason i provided it is because i've bookmarked it as the best study i've seen. are you actually disagreeing that household net worth is concentrated in america? are you claiming that it has become less concentrated since 2000? shouldn't you be providing, you know, data, since you seem to know everything?

i don't even think we'll waste any time on your bleating about household wealth vs. household net worth.

as i notice you have chosen not to waste any time climbing down off your incorrect notion that american household home equity has declined as the number of new homeowners (and admittedly, equity extractors) has climbed. (still, it must have been painful for you to discover that despite your bold assertion, i knew exactly what i was talking about in my casual recollection.)

as i notice you have chosen not to waste any time showing us where kevin brought up "average hourly wage."

you see, mon cheri, as i say: i do this for fun. i look at economics blogs for serious economics discussion.

if, however, you have some serious economic discussion, have at it, but how's about you really have it instead of this juvenile fixation that i'm fantasizing what i'm talking about.

howard,

as for the unemployment rates, let's see: i asked for your cite. you provided it. i said it's 18 pages, i'll read it this weekend. you said it's all captured in the summary.

No, I said the relevant finding is in the summary. That finding directly contradicts your claim about the effects of differences in the way U.S. and European unemployment statistics are calculated. I explained this to you already.

i said since the report dates from 2000, the actual number in the summary may not be today's number. you chose to interpret this as an attack on the study's validity, although i'm not sure why.

I "interpreted" it as a statement that the finding of the study may no longer be valid. I then pointed out (a) that you have provided no evidence to support this hypothesis and (b) that my second link, to unemployment data from 2006, indicates that the finding is still valid, since in the most recent data, there is still little difference between the official unemployment rates and the BLS-adjusted rates that take into account international differences in the way the rate are calculated.

your second link only addressed a few countries in europe, not europe as a whole,

As I already said, it addressed the four largest economies in Europe, which together comprise the overwhelming majority of EU and EU-area workers. A few countries in Europe do have unemployment rates comparable to that of the U.S., but they are small countries that have little effect on the situation in Europe as a whole. Overall, unemployment in Europe is much, much higher than it is in the U.S.

howard,

now, how did we get into all of this? because my point is that people aren't stupid, that when they tell pollsters that they don't think the economy is doing as well as the GDP and aggregate income numbers would suggest, it's because for most people (let's call it roughly 80%, based on the BLS series that captures hourly earnings, which is generally reckoned to comprise 80% of workers) the economy isn't doing well.

You have provided nothing to substantiate this claim. I'm not sure what data the "BLS series that captures hourly earnings" is supposed to mean, but if this is a reference to average hourly wages, or even median hourly wages, I will point out, for the umpteenth time, that average (and even median) hourly wages alone are not a meaningful measure of income or standard of living.

Do you know why this is? One reason is that "wages" and "income" and "standard of living" are not the same thing. They're not even remotely the same thing. Citing "wages" alone ignores all non-wage income and benefits. This includes not only non-wage employment compensation, such as bonuses, commissions, profit-sharing, tips, stock, stock options, health insurance, dental insurance, life insurance, disability insurance, pension plans, retirement plans, daycare, education subsidies, transportation subsidies, employee discounts, etc., etc., but also the numerous types of non-employment income and benefits, including interest, dividends, annuities, trusts, pension plans, retirement plans, inheritances, alimony, child support, tax credits, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, numerous other federal and state social welfare benefits, rental property income, income from part-time businesses or casual labor, gifts, winnings, etc., etc. Yet you ignore all these other sources of income and benefits and focus on wages alone. It's meaningless.

my list of indicators are the kinds of things i look at to draw those conclusions. thus far, the one you've challenged is household debt, and in absolute terms, in aggregate, by your own cite, i'm correct.

Huh? You're correct about what? That aggregate household debt has increased? So what? So have aggregate household assets. I've been over all this already.

howard,

as to the extent of home equity, i'm not going to repeat the considerable detail that you can find at several cites i will provide you in a moment, but the bottom line is that the aggregate loan-to-value (the inverse of the householder's equiity stake) has risen from roughly 32% in 1980 to to roughly 42% in 2004 (meaning that my recollection of 58% home equity is correct - waddya know?). you can find that info in graph 3, page 2, here: http://www.bis.org/publ/wpapers/cgfs26lehnert.pdf

Your URL doesn't work. It returns "The Page Cannot Be Found." Try again.

ah, gop, still at it! grand, very grand. so, let's pick up, shall we?

since i told you that the net worth concentration link i provided you was from 1998, you're not exactly providing me any new insights here by telling me that (gasp!) it's from 1998! but as i just noted, fine, demonstrate to me that the basic premise - household net worth is highly concentrated so the aggregate data of household net worth increasing even as household debt increases - is wrong. as you would see, provide data.

and as i just said, but to continue, household debt is not concentrated in the same way: 10% of household do not have 70% of household debt. that said, yes, i'd like to have household data on credit-card debt, but i can assure you that 70% of credit-card debt is not held by 10% of households. it's simply not possible due to credit limits.

as for the ability to pay debt, i'm sorry it's too hard for you to pay attention and all, so here they are again (and i don't know how to provide a hyperlink, but surely copying and pasting isn't beyond you?). This one is the fed's analysis of the ratio of consumer debt payments to income, which comes as close as any piece of data that i'm aware of to demonstrating the ability of households to service their debt:

http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/housedebt/default.htm

the notion that people are borrowing more because they can secure more debt against their rising assets is addressed in some detail in the greenspan cite i gave you, but let's say in short that when 30% of households don't own a home, 50% of households don't own any stocks, and the median for those who do own stocks is a 5-digit number that i can't remember right now, but which you can find somewhere in the 66 pages here (http://www.ici.org/pdf/rpt_05_equity_owners.pdf), increasing levels of credit card debt are not exactly being anchored by massively valued assets. (Greenspan strongly argues, in his speech, which is supported by research that he took a very personal hand in, that the key support for consumption has been home equity extraction, but obviously the increased level of credit-card debt suggests that for many, that hasn't been enough. i do, however, acknowledge, as i said up above, that there are externalities at play that are difficult to isolate wrt to use of credit cards in lieu of cash as a means of accumulating airline miles.)

anyhow, my "point" is that i don't rely on household debt alone, because household debt incorporates mortgage debt, whereas credit-card debt is almost always for immediate consumption.

as i noted, the ratio of debt service for homeowners is at its highest since the fed started tracking this in 1980; it's somewhat better for the 30% of households that are renters, but since increasing rents are a factor driving up the cpi, i expect that to start to get worse. the aggregate here (which again is all we have that i'm aware of) is, like that for homeowners, at its highest since the fed started tracking.

and then this is the fed's household survey of consumer finances, 2004, which the careful reader (as you want me to believe you are) can use to learn a great deal from:

http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/oss/oss2/2004/scf2004home.html

now, as for the unemployment data, here's what i said as soon as i had a chance to take a quick skim of your link:

"gop, my sweet, i appreciate the link and i'll spend some time perusing the 18-pager this weekend, so let me, for the moment, withdraw my remarks on comparative unemployment until i've looked at what you've provided."

are those words that somehow to you mean i'm disputing anything? i want to examine the report, and i want to examine what, if anything, may have changed since 2000, but at no time have i claimed that european unemployment is not higher than US unemployment. sheesh. (as for the biggest economies in europe, you wouldn't tell me that if we looked at unemployment in california, new york, florida, and texas, that was all we needed to know in america, would you?)

Dude, stop using Excel. At least use OpenOffice.

my sweet, i have a child to take care of now, so this will have to be my last round with you for the night, delightful as it has been.

we'll start with the home equity-related url:

http://www.bis.org/publ/wgpapers/cgfs26lehnert.pdf

as for your other remarks: the BLS has a variety of comp-related surveys. the one that looks at hourly wages is generally said to cover 80% of workers, so i use that as a proxy for the number of people not doing especially well in the economy. That is not a judgement that wages are the only factor (although please: alimony? gifts? get serious). why is that so hard for you to understand? since i said, way back when, that i agree that wages aren't the only factor, and that i look at a bunch of other indicators (although i certainly am never going to waste my time looking into "winnings" as a factor in the status of 120,000,000 households), i have no idea what cause you to project such a thing onto me. (social security: yeah, that's the ticket: everyone on social security is doing just swimmingly, aren't they? try to get serious here, and while you're at it, maybe you can provide all the lovely data about how well most households are doing on dividends, given that 50% of households own no stock at all.)

as for household debt, much as you now might like to deny it, as i already quoted you, you claimed that my comment that household debt was at historic highs was an example of my making stuff up. now you're trying to claim that you have countered my argument, except for one problem: you haven't. to counter my argument, you need to demonstrate that household assets and household debt track, that the same people who own the assets owe the debt. all you've done is recited a basic identity: household net worth equals household assets minus household liablities. pugnacity does not proof make.

pleasant dreams, sweetums.

howard,

you can find alan greenspan's extensive discussion (and he's more sanguine than i, although not without some concerns) here: http://www.federalreserve.gov/boardDocs/Speeches/2005/200509262/default.htm.

Well, I'm not sure why you think I should give any weight at all to your opinion in comparison to Alan Greenspan's, but Greenspan clearly does not consider the national housing debt to be a serious problem. As he states at the conclusion of the document you cite:

"In summary, it is encouraging to find that, despite the rapid growth of mortgage debt, only a small fraction of households across the country have loan-to-value ratios greater than 90 percent. Thus, the vast majority of homeowners have a sizable equity cushion with which to absorb a potential decline in house prices. In addition, the LTVs for recent homebuyers appear to be lower in those states that have experienced the most explosive run-up in house prices and that, conceivably, could be at risk for the largest price reversal."

The fundamental reasons why mortgage debt has increased are (a) more and more people are buying their own homes rather than renting, and (b) interest rates have been at persistent lows, allowing people to borrow more money for the same total cost. Higher rates of home ownership and low interest rates are generally considered desirable characteristics of a national economy, but you seem to disagree.

your assumption that rising equity values offset the new home ownership

I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean. Rising home equity has allowed many people to borrow more money, because it has increased their assets and hence lowered their risk to creditors. This has increased their standard of living. I never said that rising equity has lowered total mortgage debt, if that's what you're suggesting.

howard,

since i told you that the net worth concentration link i provided you was from 1998, you're not exactly providing me any new insights here by telling me that (gasp!) it's from 1998!

It's as if you don't read anything I write. Of what relevance is a chart from 1998 to economic conditions in 2006? Of what relevance is a chart from 1998 to the economic record of an administration that took office in 2001? Do you see the problem? It's called "chronology."

but as i just noted, fine, demonstrate to me that the basic premise - household net worth is highly concentrated so the aggregate data of household net worth increasing even as household debt increases - is wrong.

I don't have the burden of proving your factual assertions wrong, although I may choose to do so on occasion. You have the burden of proving your assertions to be correct. You haven't done that. I've already caught you making a number of clearly false factual claims. There is no reason to believe the rest of your claims are reliable unless and until you can substantiate them with actual data.

and as i just said, but to continue, household debt is not concentrated in the same way: 10% of household do not have 70% of household debt. that said, yes, i'd like to have household data on credit-card debt, but i can assure you that ...

Ha ha ha ha ha! You "assure" me, do you? I don't want your "assurances," I want data. Where is it? Stop making things up and produce your evidence.

are those words that somehow to you mean i'm disputing anything?

I didn't say you "disputed" it. For about the third time, I'm pointing out that the study directly contradicts your claim about the effects of differences in the way U.S. and European unemployment statistics are calculated.

What part of this don't you understand?

howard,

as for the ability to pay debt, i'm sorry it's too hard for you to pay attention and all, so here they are again (and i don't know how to provide a hyperlink, but surely copying and pasting isn't beyond you?). This one is the fed's analysis of the ratio of consumer debt payments to income, which comes as close as any piece of data that i'm aware of to demonstrating the ability of households to service their debt:
http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/housedebt/default.htm

The data shows only a modest increase in total debt service ratio, and as I have already explained, the primary reason for this is that people are able to borrow more because their assets have increased and because interest rates are low. Real estate values and other assets have increased dramatically, and interest rates are low, meaning that borrowers pose lower risks to creditors. You can see this by comparing the changes for renters are homeoweners. The DSR for renters has actually declined significantly, while for homeowners it has increased. Homeowners are much more likely than renters to have significant assets, so they are able to borrow more money relative to their income.

In addition, the trend of rising DSR clearly long predates the Bush Administration (it increased dramatically during the Clinton Administration), so the idea that if it's a problem it can be attributed to Bush Administration economic policies is also total nonsense. Your own citation directly contradicts such a conclusion.

the notion that people are borrowing more because they can secure more debt against their rising assets is addressed in some detail in the greenspan cite i gave you,

It's not merely a "notion." It's a fact.

but let's say in short that when 30% of households don't own a home, 50% of households don't own any stocks, and the median for those who do own stocks is a 5-digit number that i can't remember right now, but which you can find somewhere in the 66 pages here (http://www.ici.org/pdf/rpt_05_equity_owners.pdf), increasing levels of credit card debt are not exactly being anchored by massively valued assets.

Ha ha ha ha ha! I guess you missed the fact that, according to your own citation, the DSR has been rising only for homeowners. For renters, the DSR has declined significantly, from around 30 in 2000 to around 24 in 2006. Do please explain to me why the absence of real estate assets to secure credit card debt is a concern for a group of people whose DSR is in decline.

GOP and howard: Get a room. You sound like an old married couple.

the notion that people are borrowing m