Truly Scary

The scariest item of the week largely went by unnoticed with all of the alarms and sirens going off up and down Wall Street. According to the New York Fed's Quarterly Report on Household Debt, US total household debt increased by $109B or 0.6% during the second quarter. This brings the number up to $17.8T. Total household debt is up $733B or 4.3% on a year over year basis. Within that number, credit card balances increased by $27B, to reach $1.14T as households are forced to find a way to finance familial standards of living in a very difficult economy for middle to lower income households. Aggregate delinquency rates printed at 3.2% for a second consecutive quarter. That said, a whopping 9.1% of all credit card balances have spent time in delinquency within the past year.