The Real Estate Bloggers

Household Debt Declining For All The Wrong Reasons

Posted: 23 Sep 2010 06:42 AM PDT

Money_down_the_drain You may have heard about household debt declining by nearly 2.3 percent, or 610 billion, over the past 2 years. And that is a good thing for a country that is in debt up to it’s eyeballs.

But this number is a bit misleading. Consumers have only paid off 22 billion dollars of that debt reduction. Guess where the rest of it came from. Read this excerpt from the Wall Street Journal and cringe.

There are two ways, though, that the debts can decline: People can pay off existing loans, or they can renege on the loans, forcing the lender to charge them off. As it happens, the latter accounted for almost all the decline. Our own analysis of data from the Fed and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. suggests that over the two years ending June 2010, banks and other lenders charged off a total of about $588 billion in mortgage and consumer loans.

That means consumers managed to shave off only $22 billion in debt through the kind of belt-tightening we typically envision. In other words, in the absence of defaults, they would have achieved an annualized decline of only 0.08%.

So the foreclosures and bankruptcies are clearing 588 billion in debt. And through these foreclosures our asset base as a nation has also dropped. The foreclosures have dropped the value of the nation’s housing inventory even more.

So as our debts have dropped, our asset base has dropped. That is not the recipe of success…

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Household Debt Declining For All The Wrong Reasons

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Top 10 Most Sexually Satisfied Cities In The United States

Posted: 23 Sep 2010 06:21 AM PDT

Couple If you have ever wondered why the folks in the Midwest are so friendly, and happy? Well, a new survey from Men’s Health magazine may have the answer.

The most sexually satisfied city in the United States is Indianapolis, Indiana. Closely following Indianapolis is Columbus, Ohio, Fort Wayne, Indiana, and Cincinnati, Ohio. All is the heartland.

So for you bi-coastal couples looking for a place to live that might spice up your life, check out the Midwest. It truly lives up to it’s reputation as the friendliest part of the country.

Top 10 Most Sexually Satisfied Cities  1.  Indianapolis, IN 2.  Columbus, OH 3.  Fort Wayne, IN 4.  Cincinnati, OH 5.  Salt Lake City, UT 6.  San Antonio, TX 7.  Denver, CO 8.  Austin, TX 9   Boise City, ID 10. Chicago, IL

via Men’s Health Magazine

Thanks for reading this post. If you would like to see more articles like this, please come visit The Real Estate Bloggers. where it was originally published.

Top 10 Most Sexually Satisfied Cities In The United States