Thursday, October 16, 2008

Consumer (ie-Credit Card Debt) as a % of GDP

To quote Victor Borge, "I do not do requests, unless of course, I have been asked to do so." A Cappy Cap reader requested consumer debt as a percent of GDP, which, as you'll see below only corroborates that this country lives progressively more by borrowing and progressive less on working...which is just the kind of country Barack needs to get into the White House.

4 comments:

Bike Bubba said...

Dang, I'm not doing my share. Five will get you ten that there are some people up around 40-50'% of income in consumer debt to make up for me.

Anonymous said...

Basic Question I need answered.

How is consumer debt calculated? What qualifies as consumer debt?
I assume it is calculated by monthly debt obligations, car loans, credits cards.
Do Student Loans get calculated in this figure?
Does Mortgage debt get calculated into this?
Is this all "Bad Debt" or is some of this debt actually generating a return? such as rental property mortgages...

Anonymous said...

Hey, Cap'n. If you do "graphs by request", how about one I've been looking for since quite a while.

A graph of the cost of a barrel of oil (light, sweet crude) in what fraction of an ounce of gold (Handy & Harman quote for bullion would work) it requires to purchase it. A 50-year time frame would be good.

All I ever see are graphs of $/barrel, or "inflation-adjusted" $/barrel, all of which are nonsense.

langmann said...

How much of this is due to low interest rates?

Why not make another graph with this on it plus another line plot showing the interest rate over those years?