The Revolt of the Debt Slaves Has Started
by Wolf Richter
WolfStreet.com
April 15, 2016
Ah yes, the Millennials.
If we could just get consumers to borrow more so that they spend money they don’t have on things they don’t need in order to boost GDP and corporate profits, all would be fine. That’s the current meme among economists.
Since 68.5% of US GDP is related to personal consumption expenditures, boosting consumer spending is seen as crucial. Since wages at the lower 75% are crummy and have not been rising enough to keep up with inflation, the only other way to prod consumers into spending more is to bamboozle them into borrowing more and blowing this moolah instantly.
Cutting interest rates to zero was supposed to have helped that noble process (though consumers see those zero-rates inexplicably only on their savings and not on their debts). So that process of growing GDP by loading up consumers with debt, which worked for decades, has stalled:
The Rest…HERE
