The Battered Athlete | Talking Points Memo

Government is calling on the American consumer to pull us through one more time. Congress and the White House want families to spend-spend-spend to restart the American economy and prop up world markets, and they are even offering a few hundred bucks to get started. The government is like a coach who turns to a battered athlete and asks him to play his heart out one more time, but no one asks how much longer he can keep doing this. The American consumer is exhausted. Debt loads now exceed annual income. The proportion of income that goes to interest payments is at record-breaking highs. Twenty-three million families cannot make more than the minimum payments on their credit cards. One in four families say they are worried about how they will pay their credit card bills this month. Nearly half of all credit card holders missed at least one payment last year, and an additional 2.1 million families missed one or more mortgage payments. (Data cited here and here.)


This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1250813