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Comment by mikeyouse | Hacker News Reader

Yes, yes, the sky is falling. The full picture gives hint to how banal this data is:

Consumer revolving credit: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CCLACBW027SBOG

Consumer delinquencies: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DRCCLACBS

Both are ~on trend for post-GFC US, total debt isn't inflation adjusted either so of course the number is getting bigger as unemployment is low and inflation has been high. A more useful metric is probably household debt service ratios like:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TDSP

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It also doesn't (seem to) take into account how prevalent credit cards as a method of payment have become - for whatever reason, most of the companies I owe money to would rather I let them debit my credit card each month (and pay CC transaction fees) than send me a bill and let me pay them with online bill pay. My credit card bill is astronomical every month, but that's because all my bills are on it, and I just pay the balance every month.

They prefer auto-pay type setups because refunds are easier to prevent than squeezing a payment out of a non-payer.

Online bill pay (initiated on your end) is usually just paper checks and occasionally ACH transfers, both of which take time and are annoying to deal with, so of course they don’t like it.

> Yes, yes, the sky is falling

I agree that we shouldn't buy into the media's perpetual gloom & doom machine but I also caution against the knee-jerk contrarian "everything is fine" impulse.

The percentage rate of change is often the best signal in these kinds of indicators. We're around 20% YoY. The last two years (2004 & 2008) we hit that kind of level weren't strong economies.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=ZAtQ

The Dec '22 FOMC Minutes also hinted that the FOMC is also watching credit card levels. Interest rates have exploded higher yet consumers are increasing their credit card debt.

Consumer delinquencies link should be this one?

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DRCCLACBS

Looks like a fairly low rate, but growing quite fast.

Yep - thanks. Updated my post. So much of the current crop of indicators is fairly obviously just mean-reversion. Of course there's the risk of a hard landing, but when delinquency rates are lowered via the stimulus funds it doesn't seem very interesting that they've increased once the stimulus money ran out.

Relevant, contextualizing, comments is a textbook example of why the web sorely needs a broadly used third-party comment system. How many readers of that article on cnbc.com will never get this perspective?

The "broadly used" part would ruin the entire concept.

That's definitely a challenge, but I don't think the task of comment ranking is hopeless if using sufficient author reputation signals. That's especially true if ranking is personalized.

What happened there in 2010?

An accounting change: https://economics.stackexchange.com/questions/15387/why-did-...

Does the TDSP data include the student loan pause?

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