Credit card balances spiked in the third quarter to a $1.08 trillion record. Here's how we got here
Credit card balances spiked in the third quarter to a $1.08 trillion record. Here's how we got here
Strong consumer spending boosted credit card balances to a new record high in the third quarter, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
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Up until recently, most Americans benefited from a few government-supplied safety nets, most notably the large injection of stimulus money, which left many households sitting on a stockpile of cash that enabled some cardholders to keep their credit card balances in check.
But that cash reserve is largely gone after consumers gradually spent down their excess savings from the Covid-19 pandemic years.
It is absolutely insane to me that anyone thinks the stimulus money left households sitting on a stockpile of cash.
As though millions of people on the edge of poverty sat like dragons upon a mountain of wealth.
Seriously, they don't even have a grasp on how little that money was even worth. That shit evaporated the instant it arrived just to pay off some of the interest on existing debt.
Exactly. That shit was a months rent. Anyone still talking about it is just stirring up bs
There are a lot of people conditioned to see the little guy getting money as some kind of affront to freedom. Most of them are the little guy as well, unfortunately.
But but thats different, that guy down the street with two kids who wakes up at 6 and goes to work every day doesn't deserve that money for reasons I can't articulate without sounding racist, But I deserve my check.
/s
Listen, I'm a hard working American and I come from hard working Americans. We built this country and we're just having a hard time for the last couple of months but we work hard. That guy up the street, he's needed "help" for years. That isn't help, that's a handout. He's not trying. I can't see any systemic reasons that things might be more difficult for those people, they just aren't working as hard as us. I mean sure he goes to work but where is he working? Why doesn't he just get a better job like I did?
/s although I'm sure someone has said those exact words and meant it seriously.
I live in a red state and have heard people say almost exactly this, except they were serious.
And the race angle is just a coincidence!
That's the wild part. We got like two or three checks of $1200, 800, and like $400 or something similar. Less than $2500. That's not a stockpile. A stockpile would be if we all had an extra $20-40k just sitting and no debt.
It's the people who got laid off or partially laid off that got a good deal. The 600/week unemployment was a lot if money for people, especially if you still were getting most of a paycheck.
Lol. The PPP loans is where all the money disappeared to. Yes people got some money but it was spent for necessities, and to be honest it wasn't even that much. Some business got hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars that the government is still trying to recover which they probably never will.
I knew some bank folks. From what I heard, large amounts of the PPP loan money sat in the bank because some banks had trouble giving the money out. That extra money earned the banks a hefty amount of interest, and the C-suites of the bank made-off with a huge chunk of year-end bonus as a result. So while it isn't directly the PPP loan money, the bankers made a lot of money off of it.
The PPP loans that they were able to give out went to some small businesses and a large percentage of that money were forgiven. But some small businesses also had some trouble getting their loans forgiven due to either bad documentation / application / or the bank that gave them the loan did a poor job of filing the paperwork. So some of those businesses were stuck with a loan that they had to pay back or is waiting for it to be properly processed.
And of course there are a lot of fraud, too.