ST. LOUIS, MO – September 12, 2026 (STL.News) Government Debt – The United States has crossed another financial threshold: federal debt has surpassed $40 trillion.
But the number that may ultimately matter more to American families isn’t $40 trillion.
It is how much money remains in their bank accounts after they pay the mortgage or rent, property taxes, insurance, utilities, groceries, gasoline, healthcare, education expenses, automobile payments, credit cards, and, for millions of homeowners, association dues and special assessments.
America’s financial problems increasingly intersect at one place: the household budget.
Federal borrowing continues at historically high levels. Cities face aging infrastructure and rising construction costs. Homeowners’ associations are confronting higher insurance, maintenance, and replacement expenses. Mortgage rates remain elevated. Consumer credit is expensive. Healthcare consumes an enormous share of national resources. College remains costly. Energy prices have risen sharply during the past year.
Each problem has different causes, and blaming them all on government spending would be misleading.
But collectively, they create a potentially dangerous economic question:
How much more can the American consumer afford?
That question matters far beyond individual household finances.
Consumer spending remains one of the central engines of the U.S. economy. When mandatory and near-mandatory household expenses consume more income, consumers eventually cut discretionary spending.
Restaurants feel it.
Retailers feel it.
Automobile dealers feel it.
Hotels feel it.
Entertainment businesses feel it.
Small businesses feel it.
Eventually employers and governments can feel it too.
The danger is a fiscal feedback loop in which governments, institutions, and service providers repeatedly solve their own financial pressures by shifting additional costs to households—until households can no longer absorb them.
Government Debt – Federal debt has crossed $40 trillion
The federal government’s total public debt outstanding exceeded $40 trillion in September 2026, according to Treasury data.
The number is extraordinary, but the trajectory may be more consequential than the milestone itself.
The Congressional Budget Office projects a federal budget deficit of approximately $1.9 trillion in fiscal 2026.
Federal revenues are projected at approximately $5.6 trillion while outlays reach about $7.4 trillion.
In other words, even with trillions of dollars flowing into Washington, federal spending continues to substantially exceed federal revenue.
CBO projects the annual deficit will reach approximately $3.1 trillion by 2036 under current law.
Debt held by the public is projected to rise from about 101% of gross domestic product in 2026 to 120% by 2036, exceeding the previous post-World War II record.
Perhaps even more concerning is what happens to interest.
CBO projects net federal interest costs rising from approximately 3.3% of GDP in 2026 to 4.6% by 2036.
Those payments don’t build highways.
They don’t replace water mains.
They don’t construct schools.
They don’t pay teachers or police officers.
They represent the cost of financing accumulated federal debt.
CBO warns that rising interest costs are one of the principal forces driving projected federal deficits higher over the coming decade.
That creates the first major squeeze.
As more government revenue is required to service existing debt, policymakers face increasingly difficult choices involving taxes, spending, borrowing and government services.
Government Debt – Baltimore offers a warning at the local level
Baltimore provides a timely example of how the national fiscal discussion eventually reaches individual taxpayers.
Baltimore voters will decide in November whether to authorize up to $280 million in additional city borrowing through four separate bond questions.
The proposals include:
- $22 million for affordable housing;
- $60 million for schools;
- $50 million for community and economic development; and
- $148 million for public infrastructure.
The infrastructure proposal includes streets, highways, alleys, utilities, public buildings, parks, and information technology infrastructure.
Those are legitimate public needs.
The problem is that legitimate needs still require money.
Voting for the measures authorizes Baltimore to borrow it. Voting against them denies that borrowing authority.
Baltimore therefore illustrates a larger dilemma confronting American municipalities.
Cities cannot simply stop maintaining roads, sewer systems, water systems, police facilities, parks and public buildings.
But maintaining those systems becomes increasingly expensive.
And much of America’s infrastructure is already old.
Government Debt – America’s infrastructure bill is coming due
The National League of Cities reported in its 2026 Municipal Infrastructure Conditions survey that cities continue to struggle with aging assets, rising construction costs and changing federal funding requirements.
Streets, water systems, sewers, stormwater systems and water-treatment facilities remain among municipalities’ highest infrastructure priorities.
And there is another revealing statistic.
Property taxes represent approximately 60% of municipal tax revenue and are relied upon by nearly 90% of cities, according to the National League of Cities.
That means the financial health of local government and the financial health of property owners are deeply interconnected.
Cities need revenue to maintain infrastructure.
Property owners provide a substantial portion of that revenue.
But property owners are also confronting rapidly changing costs.
This creates a problem that is easy to overlook when government budgets are considered independently from household budgets.
The government’s taxpayer and the economy’s consumer are the same person.
Government Debt – The homeowner is being squeezed from multiple directions
Consider the finances of a typical homeowner.
The mortgage isn’t the only housing expense.
There may also be:
- Property taxes.
- Homeowners insurance.
- Electricity.
- Natural gas.
- Water.
- Sewer charges.
- Trash service.
- Maintenance.
- Repairs.
- Landscaping.
- HOA assessments.
And potentially a special assessment costing thousands or tens of thousands of dollars.
For somebody purchasing a home today, financing itself remains expensive.
Freddie Mac reported that the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate reached 6.76% on Sept. 10, compared with 6.71% the previous week and 6.35% one year earlier.
The average 15-year mortgage was 6.09%.
That can radically change affordability.
A home can have the same purchase price but cost the buyer hundreds of dollars more each month simply because of the interest rate.
And unlike a temporary increase in grocery prices, that financing decision can affect a household for decades unless the mortgage is refinanced.
Then comes the HOA
STL.News has recently examined another rapidly developing housing affordability problem: homeowners associations and condominium associations imposing large assessments on owners.
HOAs provide an important example because their financial structure resembles, on a much smaller scale, some of the problems facing municipal governments.
Associations must maintain private roads, roofs, elevators, pools, clubhouses, landscaping, drainage systems, building exteriors, and other common property.
That requires reserves.
If an association adequately funds reserves throughout the useful life of those assets, it can spread future replacement expenses across many years and many owners.
When reserves are inadequate, maintenance is postponed, or long-term expenses are underestimated, the eventual bill doesn’t disappear.
It gets larger.
The Foundation for Community Association Research acknowledges this directly.
Regular assessments should fund both current operations and long-term reserves. Special assessments are generally imposed when reserves or insurance are insufficient for a particular expense.
The organization warns that underfunding can lead to deferred maintenance, higher long-term repair costs, special assessments, and potentially reduced property values.
That’s why prospective buyers need to investigate an association’s finances before purchasing property.
A $400,000 condominium isn’t necessarily a $400,000 financial obligation.
If the association has badly underfunded reserves and the building needs a roof, structural work, elevators, plumbing or major exterior repairs, the buyer may effectively be purchasing a portion of those unfunded liabilities as well.
The homeowner may then receive the equivalent of a municipal tax increase — except it arrives as a special assessment.
The same financial pattern keeps appearing
An uncomfortable similarity runs through these problems.
A homeowners association delays maintenance.
A municipality delays infrastructure.
A government runs structural deficits.
A family carries balances because income doesn’t cover expenses.
They aren’t economically identical, and the federal government has monetary and borrowing powers that households, HOAs, and municipalities do not.
But one accounting principle applies to all of them:
Postponing an expense does not necessarily eliminate it.
Sometimes postponement makes the eventual expense significantly larger.
A $500 repair today can become a $5,000 repair later.
A road that could have been maintained may eventually require reconstruction.
A leaking roof can become structural damage.
And debt incurred today creates future principal and interest obligations.
Eventually somebody pays.
For government, that somebody is ultimately connected to the taxpayer.
For an HOA, it is the homeowner.
For a business, it is some combination of customers, employees, owners, and creditors.
For a household, there is nobody farther down the chain.
That is where the financial pressure stops.
Consumers are already carrying $18.8 trillion in debt
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York reported that total U.S. household debt stood at approximately $18.77 trillion at the end of the second quarter of 2026.
That included:
- $13.12 trillion in mortgage debt.
- $1.71 trillion in automobile loans.
- $1.65 trillion in student debt.
- $1.26 trillion in credit-card balances.
- $459 billion in home-equity lines of credit.
Total household debt was approximately $383 billion higher than a year earlier.
The New York Fed also reported that 4.7% of outstanding household debt was in some stage of delinquency.
New delinquencies for automobiles and credit cards remained elevated.
That does not mean the American household sector is insolvent.
It isn’t.
The Federal Reserve’s May Financial Stability Report said household balance sheets overall remained strong and that most household debt was owed by borrowers with strong credit scores. Mortgage delinquency rates remained low by historical standards, and many homeowners retained substantial equity.
But the same Federal Reserve report said automobile and credit-card delinquencies remained high compared with the past decade, while the household debt-service ratio had edged upward.
That distinction matters.
America does not have one consumer.
It has households in dramatically different financial circumstances.
An affluent homeowner with a 3% mortgage, substantial investments, and no credit-card debt may be doing very well.
A younger renter with student loans, an automobile payment, childcare expenses and revolving credit-card debt may be experiencing an entirely different economy.
Credit cards can cost more than 20%
The cost of borrowing compounds the problem.
Federal Reserve consumer-credit data released Sept. 8 showed that credit-card accounts assessed interest carried an average rate of about 22.15% in the available 2026 data.
Twenty-four-month personal loans at commercial banks were around 11.86% in the latest reported period.
Consumer credit continued expanding in July, increasing at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.2%.
At a 22% interest rate, carrying consumer debt becomes extremely expensive.
A household that uses credit cards to bridge the gap between income and recurring expenses can therefore enter another dangerous cycle:
Higher living costs ? greater credit use ? larger interest expense ? less available income ? greater dependence on credit.
That isn’t sustainable indefinitely.
The Federal Reserve sees financial stress
The Federal Reserve’s latest household economic well-being report provides perhaps some of the clearest evidence that many Americans are feeling the pressure.
In its 2025 survey, 73% of adults said they were doing okay financially or living comfortably.
That means most Americans were not reporting financial distress.
But underneath that headline were warning signs.
Financial well-being deteriorated among young adults and lower-income households.
About 58% of adults said price changes during the previous year had made their financial situation worse.
About 16% said they did not pay all their bills during the previous month.
And among adults earning less than $50,000, four in 10 said they couldn’t cover even a $100 emergency solely with savings.
Price increases remained Americans’ most common financial concern.
Those statistics should be considered whenever a government, utility, insurance company, school, association or other institution decides households can absorb “just another” increase.
For financially comfortable households, another $50 a month may be an annoyance.
For somebody already unable to cover all monthly bills, it can be the difference between remaining current and becoming delinquent.
Inflation isn’t finished with the household
Inflation has declined considerably from its earlier post-pandemic extremes, but declining inflation does not mean prices return to their previous levels.
It means prices are generally increasing more slowly.
In July, the Consumer Price Index was 3.4% higher than a year earlier, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
But individual categories were moving much faster.
- Energy prices were up 14.7% over the year.
- Gasoline was up 24.6%.
- Electricity increased 4.2%.
- Food increased 3%.
- Shelter increased 3.2%.
- Medical care services increased 2.7%.
Those categories matter because consumers cannot simply eliminate many of them.
- People have to eat.
- Most workers have to get to work.
- Homes require electricity.
- Families need somewhere to live.
- Illness requires healthcare.
That makes inflation in essential expenses especially damaging to discretionary purchasing power.
Government Debt – Gasoline demonstrates how quickly budgets can change
Gasoline is a particularly visible example.
A 24.6% year-over-year increase doesn’t affect every household equally.
Someone working remotely and driving 4,000 miles annually experiences one impact.
A construction worker, delivery driver, suburban commuter, or small-business owner driving 20,000 or 30,000 miles experiences something entirely different.
Fuel prices also influence transportation and distribution expenses elsewhere in the economy.
That can eventually affect the cost of delivering food, merchandise, building materials, and services.
Again, the consumer can encounter the expense more than once.
First at the gasoline pump.
Then potentially in the price of goods whose transportation became more expensive.
Government Debt – Healthcare presents an even larger structural problem
Healthcare is another expense households cannot simply boycott.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services continues to project national healthcare expenditures through 2034, tracking spending by households, businesses, and governments through private insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, hospitals, physicians, prescription drugs, and other categories.
The economic burden extends beyond what a patient pays at the doctor’s office.
Households can bear healthcare costs through:
- Insurance premiums.
- Deductibles.
- Copayments.
- Prescription expenses.
- Employer compensation decisions.
- Medicare taxes.
- Federal and state taxes supporting public health programs.
- And out-of-pocket medical expenses.
A worker may therefore be paying for healthcare even when he or she hasn’t visited a doctor that month.
The cost may be embedded in an insurance premium, employer benefit package, or tax obligation.
That makes healthcare another large claim on household and government resources competing with virtually everything else.
Government Debt – Education adds another layer
Higher education creates its own affordability challenge.
The College Board reports that average published tuition and fees for the 2025-26 academic year reached approximately:
- $11,950 for an in-state student at a public four-year institution.
- $31,880 for an out-of-state student at a public four-year institution.
- $45,000 at a private nonprofit four-year institution.
Those figures represent published tuition and fees rather than what every student actually pays. Grants and scholarships materially reduce net tuition for many students, an important distinction.
But tuition isn’t the entire college bill.
College Board estimated average annual student budgets of approximately $30,990 for an in-state public four-year student, $50,920 for an out-of-state public four-year student, and $65,470 for a private nonprofit four-year student in 2025-26.
Families therefore confront another difficult choice.
- Pay from current income.
- Spend savings.
- Borrow.
- Choose a less expensive institution.
- Delay college.
Or decide whether the expected future income from the education justifies the cost.
The New York Fed’s $1.65 trillion student-loan balance demonstrates the enormous scale of educational debt already carried by American households.
Government Debt – The consumer economy is becoming divided
One of the most revealing descriptions of the current economy came from the Federal Reserve’s Beige Book.
Federal Reserve districts reported increasingly different spending behavior depending upon income.
- Higher-income consumers remained relatively resilient.
- Middle-income consumers were becoming more cautious.
- Lower-income households were showing greater financial strain.
This may explain why economic statistics can sometimes appear disconnected from what individual consumers say they are experiencing.
Both can be true.
Aggregate consumer spending can continue growing while millions of households become more financially stressed.
Indeed, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported consumer spending increased 0.2% in July, following a 0.3% increase in June.
The economy therefore has not experienced a wholesale collapse in consumer spending.
But that doesn’t mean every consumer is financially healthy.
Government Debt – What happens when consumers finally say no?
This is the central economic risk.
- Governments can borrow.
- Corporations can raise capital.
- Municipalities can issue bonds.
- Utilities can request rate increases.
- Insurance companies can raise premiums where regulators and markets permit them.
- Universities can increase tuition.
- HOAs can increase assessments under their governing documents and applicable law.
- Healthcare providers and insurers can negotiate higher prices.
But ultimately a significant portion of those expenses reaches an individual household.
The household has a finite income.
Once essential expenses consume that income, something has to be cut.
Usually discretionary spending goes first.
A family delays buying a refrigerator.
It keeps the automobile another year.
It stops eating out twice a week.
It cancels a vacation.
It drops a streaming subscription.
It postpones remodeling.
It buys less clothing.
It trades down at the grocery store.
It stops visiting entertainment venues.
Each decision seems insignificant in isolation.
Multiply those decisions across tens of millions of households, and they become macroeconomics.
Government Debt – Small businesses could feel it first
Large corporations have access to capital markets and diversified revenue streams.
Many small businesses don’t.
A locally owned restaurant needs customers tonight.
A neighborhood retailer needs purchases this week.
A contractor needs homeowners willing to renovate.
A hotel needs travelers.
A car dealer needs buyers.
When households cut discretionary spending, these businesses feel the effects quickly.
Businesses then respond rationally.
They reduce employee hours.
They postpone hiring.
They cut inventory.
They delay expansion.
They negotiate harder with suppliers.
Some close.
That can produce another feedback loop:
Household pressure ? weaker discretionary spending ? lower business revenue ? reduced hiring or layoffs ? weaker household income ? still weaker spending.
Eventually, governments can feel the consequences through slower growth in sales, income, and other tax revenues.
Government Debt – Government can accidentally weaken its own tax base
This is where the fiscal problem becomes particularly dangerous.
Imagine a city facing a budget shortfall.
It raises property taxes and utility charges.
That helps the government’s immediate finances.
But homeowners now have less disposable income.
The homeowner cuts back on restaurant visits and retail purchases.
Local businesses lose revenue.
Some businesses reduce employment.
Sales-tax growth slows.
Property values may eventually be affected if the community becomes too expensive relative to alternatives.
The municipality then needs additional revenue.
It raises taxes or fees again.
That is an oversimplified example, and economic outcomes depend on many variables.
But the principle is important:
Governments can only extract so much revenue from an economy without changing economic behavior.
Taxpayers aren’t an unlimited source of money.
Government Debt – The federal government has options households don’t
It is also important not to compare Washington directly with a family checkbook.
The federal government issues debt in a currency the United States controls. Treasury securities occupy a central position in the global financial system. The federal government has enormous taxing capacity and a balance sheet vastly different from a household’s.
Cities, HOAs and families face much tighter constraints.
But none of that makes federal debt irrelevant.
CBO’s projections demonstrate why.
When interest expense consumes a growing percentage of national output and federal revenue, Congress eventually faces trade-offs.
- Taxes.
- Benefits.
- Defense.
- Infrastructure.
- Healthcare.
- Education.
Transfers to state and local governments.
Or still more borrowing.
No financial mechanism permanently eliminates those trade-offs.
Government Debt – Borrowing isn’t automatically irresponsible
Another distinction should not be lost in the political debate.
Debt can finance productive investments.
Borrowing to build a bridge that serves a community for 75 years can reasonably distribute some cost across the generations using it.
A municipality financing a water-treatment facility isn’t necessarily mismanaged.
A homeowner taking a mortgage to purchase a house isn’t necessarily financially irresponsible.
An HOA accumulating adequate reserves isn’t wasting homeowners’ money.
The question is what the debt finances and whether the borrower can service it sustainably.
Borrowing becomes more concerning when it repeatedly substitutes for addressing structural financial imbalances.
Likewise, criticism of government spending should distinguish between legitimate capital investment and chronic spending that persistently exceeds recurring revenue.
Government Debt – Deferred maintenance may be America’s hidden debt
Formal government debt appears on financial statements.
Deferred maintenance is harder for the public to see.
A city may owe $100 million in bonds, but it may also have streets, bridges, sewers, and public buildings that require hundreds of millions of dollars in future work.
An HOA may have no conventional debt but still have a roof approaching the end of its useful life with an inadequately funded reserve account.
A homeowner may have an affordable mortgage but an aging HVAC system, roof, and automobile that will eventually require replacement.
These aren’t necessarily accounting liabilities in the conventional sense.
Economically, however, they represent future claims on cash.
That is why infrastructure deserves much more attention in America’s debt discussion.
The question isn’t simply:
How much do we owe?
It is also:
How much will we soon need to spend?
Government & Corporate Debt – The HOA lesson should concern governments
The HOA special-assessment problem offers a remarkably useful lesson.
Imagine an association knows a private road will eventually need replacement.
The board has three choices.
It can collect adequate reserves gradually.
It can postpone the expense.
Or it can keep assessments artificially low and leave the problem for a future board and future homeowners.
The politically easiest option today may be the most expensive option tomorrow.
Governments face similar incentives.
Raising taxes is unpopular.
Cutting services is unpopular.
Increasing reserve contributions can be unpopular.
Replacing infrastructure before catastrophic failure isn’t politically exciting.
Borrowing can therefore become attractive because it spreads the cost into the future.
But the future eventually arrives.
Government Debt – Consumers cannot be the bailout plan for everyone
This brings America back to the household.
Governments need more money.
Cities need infrastructure.
Schools need funding.
Healthcare systems need funding.
Insurance companies need premiums sufficient to cover claims.
Utilities need capital.
Universities need revenue.
HOAs need reserves.
Businesses need margins.
Lenders need interest.
Every institution has an economic reason for needing additional money.
The problem is that much of that money ultimately comes from the same consumer.
No separate population of taxpayers.
There isn’t another population of utility customers.
Or homeowners.
Or patients.
Or students and parents.
Or insurance policyholders.
They overlap.
A 45-year-old homeowner could simultaneously be a federal taxpayer, state taxpayer, municipal taxpayer, utility customer, HOA member, health-insurance policyholder, parent of a college student, automobile borrower and credit-card customer.
Each institution may look only at its own increase.
The household experiences the total.
That distinction may be one of the most overlooked economic issues facing the United States.
Government Debt – America’s economy still has considerable strengths
None of this means an economic collapse is inevitable.
That conclusion goes well beyond the available evidence.
Most American adults still tell the Federal Reserve they are doing okay financially or living comfortably.
Mortgage delinquency remains low by historical standards.
Most household debt is held by borrowers with relatively strong credit.
Consumer spending is still increasing.
The United States remains extraordinarily wealthy and productive.
But those strengths shouldn’t obscure the warning signs.
Household debt is enormous.
Credit-card balances exceed $1.2 trillion.
Credit-card borrowing costs can exceed 20%.
Automobile and credit-card delinquencies are higher than they were a decade ago.
Housing financing remains expensive.
Gasoline and energy costs have risen.
Infrastructure requires substantial investment.
Healthcare continues consuming enormous resources.
Federal deficits remain exceptionally large.
And federal debt has crossed $40 trillion.
The question isn’t whether American consumers can absorb another $10 expense.
Most can.
The question is what happens after hundreds of institutions independently decide households can absorb another $10, $50, $100, or $500.
Government Debt – There is no infinite taxpayer
Governments often discuss taxpayers collectively.
- “The taxpayers” will pay for a project.
- “The taxpayers” will support the bonds.
- “The taxpayers” will fund the program.
But taxpayers aren’t an abstract government resource.
They are households with mortgages, children, medical bills, automobile payments, grocery bills, and retirement plans.
Every additional dollar directed toward taxes, debt service, insurance, utilities, or mandatory housing expenses is a dollar that cannot simultaneously be spent or saved elsewhere.
- That doesn’t mean the expense shouldn’t exist.
- It means policymakers should recognize the tradeoff.
- The same warning applies to HOA boards.
- The same warning applies to educational institutions.
The same warning applies throughout the economy.
Affordability cannot be evaluated one bill at a time.
It has to be evaluated against the cumulative burden placed on the household.
Government Debt – What happens next?
America probably won’t awaken one morning to discover that every government and household is suddenly bankrupt.
Fiscal stress usually develops more quietly.
A road isn’t resurfaced.
A water bill increases.
An HOA assessment rises.
A family carries a credit-card balance.
A city issues another bond.
A homeowner postpones replacing a roof.
A consumer cancels a restaurant visit.
A business doesn’t fill an open position.
A government receives less revenue than projected.
Another tax or fee is proposed.
Each event appears manageable.
Collectively, they can change an economy.
That is why the $40 trillion federal debt milestone matters.
Not because $40 trillion by itself tells Americans what happens tomorrow.
It matters because it is one part of a much larger financial system in which governments, households, businesses, and institutions are increasingly competing for the same dollars.
Baltimore’s request to borrow another $280 million is therefore not merely a Baltimore story.
HOA special assessments aren’t merely an HOA story.
Mortgage rates aren’t merely a housing story.
Healthcare isn’t merely a healthcare story.
College costs aren’t merely an education story.
And consumer debt isn’t merely a banking story.
They intersect at the kitchen table.
That is where the family decides whether enough money remains after everything else has been paid.
And because consumer spending is fundamental to American economic activity, that household decision eventually becomes everyone’s problem.
Governments can refinance debt.
Municipalities can issue bonds.
HOAs can levy assessments.
Universities can adjust tuition.
Utilities can seek rate increases.
Businesses can raise prices.
But American households cannot continually solve everybody else’s financial problems without eventually changing how they spend.
The greatest danger may therefore not be a dramatic national financial collapse.
It may be something much slower:
A prolonged squeeze in which increasing amounts of household income are absorbed by housing, taxes, insurance, energy, healthcare, education, interest and other unavoidable expenses, leaving progressively less money available to circulate through the discretionary economy.
- That would hit restaurants.
- Retailers.
- Travel.
- Entertainment.
- Automobiles.
- Housing-related businesses.
- Small businesses.
- Employment.
And ultimately government tax collections themselves.
The warning from the numbers isn’t that America has already reached that breaking point.
It is that governments and institutions should not assume the American consumer has unlimited capacity to absorb the next bill.
Because eventually somebody has to be at the end of the financial chain.
Increasingly, that somebody is the American household.
Warning: The taxpayers have hit their limits. Not because they refuse to pay because of a different philosophy. They have hit their financial limits. Everybody has and continues to make the same mistake. Pass it on to the consumer. Escaping responsibilities has to end now, or we will experience a recession or depression unlike anything the world has ever seen. Bookmark this article for future reference. This will happen unless everybody takes extreme measures to reduce costs and stop abusing consumers. My grandfather predicted this in the late 60’s when credit cards were becoming an acceptable form of payment. He was an uneducated but practical man. Common sense has left the building.
Sources: U.S. Treasury FiscalData; Congressional Budget Office; Federal Reserve Board; Federal Reserve Bank of New York; U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics; Freddie Mac; National League of Cities; Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services; College Board; Maryland State Board of Elections; Foundation for Community Association Research.
