It's all relative. A chart like this does little to put things in perspective.
For instance, they shout about the debt in the US which consumers use to buy cars and houses - but then don't mention that those items have a value which the debt must be subtracted from in order to calculate equity.
For instance, if I have a 20,000 car and a 500,000 house and have a 10K loan on the first and 300K loan on the second, I am in the PLUS column by 210K, not in debt!
Not to say there are not problems with excess debt, but fancy graphics and single interpretations don't tell the whole story.
The problem is with your numbers (at least in the US), is that if you bought that car at the usual term/rates, it's value will drop faster than you can get it paid off (or at least real close) and that 500k house that you owe 300K on obviously was purchased before the RE market crash, where most RE dropped half their price, so you now have a house that is only worth 250K, in essence vaporizing your so called PLUS that you were so happy to have.
Oh, and your boss called, your department is losing 12% of it's numbers, good luck. Welcome to current America...
On that we are very much in agreement!Greed will be the undoing of our country and the world. Although consumer greed is one of the reasons for the bubble, it took a more perfect storm of all the banks, government , etc. wanting to abuse those greedy folks to make the real crash occur. Our system actually rewards excess greed and debt. We have to move away from that.
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