Bubble Watching

History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme.
- Mark Twain

At some point we are going to have another economic bubble burst.
It's inevitable. It's what we do.
So to stay in practice, let's play Spot The Bubble.

Lee Camp gets several things right.

The value of American subprime mortgages was estimated at $1.3 trillion as of March 2007.
Outstanding student loan balances amounted to a whopping $1.31 trillion as of Dec. 31, 2016.

The current student loan delinquency or default rate is a staggering 11.2%.
Delinquency rates for ALL mortgages across the country peaked at 11.5% in 2010.

It looks exactly alike.
However, Lee does one thing wrong in this comparison: the owners of the debt are different.

A huge percentage of the subprime mortgages were owned by the banks, mortgage lenders and insurance companies. Thus the crash was a financial crisis.
Student loans, OTOH, are owned by the taxpayer. Thus, this crisis is a fiscal one, not a financial one.

As of July 8, 2016, the federal government owned approximately $1 trillion in outstanding consumer debt, per data compiled by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. That figure was up from less than $150 billion in January 2009, representing a nearly 600% increase over that time span. The main culprit is student loans, which the federal government effectively monopolized in 2010 when the Affordable Care Act was signed into law.
Prior to the Affordable Care Act, a majority of student loans originated with a private lender but were guaranteed by the government, meaning taxpayers foot the bill if student borrowers default. In 2010, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated 55% of loans fell into this category. Between 2011 and 2016, the share of privately originated student loans fell by nearly 90%.
Prior to the administration of Bill Clinton, the federal government owned zero student loans, although it had been in the business of guaranteeing loans since at least 1965. Between the first year of the Clinton presidency and the last year of George W. Bush's administration, the government slowly accumulated about $140 billion in student debt. Those figures have exploded since 2009. In February 2016, the U.S. Treasury Department revealed in its annual report that student loans account for 31% of all U.S. government assets.

One really sucky part of the ACA that people have forgotten about.
So basically a third of ALL government assets are student loans, and those loans are going bad at an increasing rate (an implied delinquency rate of 27.3 percent). The student loan crisis is no longer a crisis for just students. It's now much, much bigger than that.
This won't blow up Wall Street like last time, but it will bankrupt the nation unless something is done quick.

What Lee missed for some reason was a different bubble that also has all the same qualities of the student loan bubble, but isn't backed by taxpayers - the auto loan bubble.
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Subprime auto-loan default rates match those seen just before the 2007-2009 recession. It’s a red flag that’s been flapping for some time for analysts worried it could pose risks to the broader credit market, bank health and, ultimately, the consumer-driven economy...
Credit-rating firms and market participants have been scrambling to explain subprime default rates for recent vintages (loans made in 2015, 2016) that have now reached levels consistent with those originated just before the 2007-09 recession

Not only that, but the overall trend, of lending to increasingly suspect borrowers, is following the same pattern as we saw in 2004-2007 with subprime mortgages.

The percentage of subprime auto-loan securitizations considered deep subprime has risen to 32.5 percent from 5.1 percent since 2010, Morgan Stanley said. The researchers define deep subprime as lenders with consumer credit grades known as FICO scores below 550.

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Steve Eisman, of “The Big Short” fame, has his eyes on this sector.

Subprime auto loans constitute roughly $200 Billion, and more than one million people are in default on their auto loans.
While subprime auto loans are considerably smaller than the subprime mortgage market, a crash in auto loans will also rock the entire auto industry.

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can you spot the bubble?

A day after doing the same to Ford, Tesla Motors overtook GM to become the most value valuable car company in the U.S. by market value on Tuesday.

Tesla shares gained more than one per cent on the Nasdaq on Tuesday, changing hands at just over $300 US a share. That gives the company a total value of $52.7 billion.

That's more than GM's $49.6 billion valuation. Tesla chief executive Elon Musk says he expects the company to sell 500,000 cars next year. GM, meanwhile, sold more than 20 times that many last year.

"If you look at the different auto companies on paper, it does seem a bit proposterous, where Tesla is at this moment, versus some of the more established auto companies," Jessica Caldwell, director of industry analysis with automotive research firm Edmunds, said in an interview with CBC's On The Money on Monday.

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@gjohnsit And remember though that part of this valuation probably has to do with the Solar Roof story. Some are betting on Tesla's sales team I guess.
I don't get how putting solar $hingles everywhere when the south-facing ones are doing most of the work is going to sell in my area of the USofA.

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Lookout's picture

A study has found that the majority of Americans could be financially destroyed over an unexpected $500 expense, as only 41 percent of US citizens have that much money in their savings. https://sputniknews.com/us/201701141049581964-majority-americans-lack-sa...

Debts are the new chains of slavery!

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

@Lookout
Proverbs 22:7 (NIV), “The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is slave to the lender.”

in history

Debt bondage is when someone borrowed money and pledged their labour or their services as security for the loan. This debt could, in Roman times, be passed onto the next generation. Imagine how concerned children must have been if their parents took out loans. Although not technically a slave, a debt defaulter had no more freedom of movement and choice than a slave, so the distinction was academic.
Debt slavery was the only way to solve unpaid debts in societies where there was not the legal option of bankruptcy.

we've been trained

According to a brand new Pew survey, approximately 7 out of every 10 Americans believe that “debt is a necessity in their lives”, and approximately 8 out of every 10 Americans actually have debt right now. Most of us like to think that “someday” we will get out of the hole and quit being debt slaves, but very few of us ever actually accomplish this. That is because the entire system is designed to trap us in debt before we even get out into the “real world” and keep us in debt until we die.

Deuteronomy 15:16 But suppose a male slave says to you, “I don’t want to leave you,” because he loves you and your family and is happy with you.

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Lookout's picture

@gjohnsit

Thanks for the reminder! Some methods of oppression are timeless.

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

detroitmechworks's picture

Doesn't matter what the reason for the default is, if they hear about the location of a car, they'll be there within minutes to snatch it. They'll break locks, trespass, and anything else they have to do in order to get it.

Instead of vilified, the MSM lauds those assholes, and gives them reality shows where they take back the property of the banks from the snidely whiplash white trash who spend all their money on frivolous things like... food.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLA28umt9iw]

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I do not pretend I know what I do not know.

@detroitmechworks car repo'ed. I was there at the time, over Thanksgiving day weekend. Her car was in the garage but we gave it to him, she was 5 payments behind and he couldn't do anything for her there. She later tried telling me we shouldn't have given in. Yeah. They call the local cops before they ever take your car, and if he needed LEO help I'm quite sure he would have gotten it.

Sadly, her excuse wasn't food but horrible money habits. We rescued that car so her kids wouldn't find out, and man, they don't mess around there. Did it at the very last minute with a loan in my name and automatic payroll deductions from her. You only have days to retrieve the thing before they sell it, for less than you owed originally, naturally.

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Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur

Pluto's Republic's picture

…in common:

The are firmly rooted in income inequality, compounded by the asset stripping of the American People. It is triggered when the People try to get ahead. (With the Federal Government holding the bag.)

Well done, capitalist predators!

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