*UPDATE: (6/8) - The breakdown in consumer debt, according to CNBC, is around $957B in "revolving" credit, comprised of credit cards and charge accounts, and $1.608T in "non-revolving" credit, comprised of college loans, car loans, etc. Doing the calcs on credit card debt, then, gives $957B/96M = $9958 per household. The average home having $10k in credit card debt is still rather scary...*
It seems almost incomprehensible that consumers now have $2.52 TRILLION in debt (besides mortgages).
The recent census estimates for the number of households in the US was 111 million in 2006; let's estimate 120 million households right now. Of those, estimate (generously) that 80% of all households have an active credit card, which means 96 million households have credit cards.
Divide $2.52 trillion by 96 million and you get $26,250 in credit card debt per household.
Despite protestations to the contrary, that looks like a lot of damn credit card debt.
I'm pretty worried about the economy. Stephen Roach talks about a "double bubble" that will only be solved by long-term painful re-adjustment of American's consumer spending and debt ratios. His proposed solution is focus on exports and re-investment in infrastructure. Our nation's infrastructure is crumbling, and Barack has a plan to invest the war's capital into exactly this sector, establishing a national infrastructure bank. Nice how that dovetails.
