Yes, Americans can still get credit for cars and trucks and refrigerators, and those businesses are doing well. But just try to get a home loan now.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Every central banker in the world pays attention to credit growth, but not in the U.S.
Regardless of what our national credit rating is, people will always want a roof over their heads, food on their tables, fuel for their cars, and clothes on their backs.
There's more student debt than credit card debt! Everywhere I go, I run into young people trying to build careers while they keep shelling out money on their education loans. If the economy is looking for a new generation of home-buyers, I can't imagine they'll get it from these folks.
People don't walk away from their homes unless they can't make the payments. That's an indication that we are in a recession.
When we make purchases on credit, they give us only an illusion of prosperity.
Millions of Americans were duped by the federal government and the Federal Reserve into buying homes they could not afford and failed to count the cost. When the financial crisis of 2008 hit, they could not keep up the monthly mortgage payments and defaulted.
No other facet of American business is more corrupt, more intoxicated with illegality, more weakly regulated, and has a greater impact on poor and working people than debt collectors; not credit card companies or subprime mortgages, not even payday lenders.
More than ever before, Americans are suffering from back problems: back taxes, back rent, back auto payments.
The lifeblood of job creation in America is small business, but they can't get access to credit.
Let me remind you that credit is the lifeblood of business, the lifeblood of prices and jobs.