Nevadans saddled with large amount of debt
By Jeanne Sahadi, CNN Money
NEW YORK — Americans have a debt problem.
An estimated 1 in 3 adults with a credit history — or 77 million people — are so far behind on some of their debt payments that their account has been put “in collections.”
That’s a key finding from an Urban Institute study.
It examined non-mortgage debt, including credit card bills, car loans, medical bills, child support payments and even parking tickets.
The debt in collections ranged from as little as $25 to a whopping $125,000. But the average amount owed was $5,200.
Geographically, no area of the country is untouched.
Among the states, Nevada had the highest percentage of residents with debt in collections — 47 percent — as well as the highest average amount owed — $7,198. That was helped in part by the Las Vegas metro area, where 49 percent of residents had debt in collections.
Nobody “saddled” ’em. They all took it on voluntarily.
Unfortunately, nobody is teaching their kids about debt and when it’s a good idea or a bad idea.
Teach your children what they need to survive in the world. Unless it’s for investment, debt is bad. Do not buy crap on credit.
Huh.
All that debt couldn’t have anything to do wth sub prime loans that brought down the nation, could it?
Remember, all those folks being told they could afford $250,000+ homes with little or no down payment while making only $50,000 or less a year?
Didn’t that come out of your beloved free market Dogula?
Nope. That came from the Feds requiring banks to make loans available to minorities and other low income people who couldn’t normally qualify.
No bank WANTS to lose money. But the Federal government makes arbitrary regulations that are politically motivated, and then they guarantee that those institutions won’t lose money by bailing them out with YOUR money when the inevitable happens.
Dog, that is a conservative narrative that has long been debunked. Banks were not required as you suggest to lend money to bad credit risk. Mortgage brokers were getting rich (they got $500 for 30-yr fixed and over $1500 for complicated loans), banks were getting rich, developers were getting rich selling houses to people who could not afford them, wall street thought they had found the perfect solution to package risking debt and get filthy rich. I have lots of friends in the development business and they have all admitted to me that the corporate types were flat out blinded by the money pouring in. The feds never required banks (and developers) to not do due diligence, which I know personally several people who should never have gotten a loan did, and no bank check the employment status, salary, etc. This was all built on the notion that housing prices would continue to rise (which has never happen before).
Famously, Paul Krugman (nobel prize winning economist and a liberal to boot) warned tirelessly that there would be a serious crash because of wall streets obsession with derivatives and all would end badly – even though he did not predict just how bad. Warren Buffett (democrat and guizionare) also warned of the same thing. Contrary to them, Allan Greenspan and other wall street types tried to poo poo the nay sayers remarking that the housing market was solid. So no this was pure unadulterated greed (and some illegal behavior by the largest financial houses on the planet), and as has been shown by some large fines levied.
The reason nobody went to jail is that Eric Holder has taken the stance (a famous memo before he was attorney general) that essentially it can be a bad thing to throw corporate types in jail as it may cause more harm in lost jobs then fining them some minimal amount. Somebody robs a 7-11 goes to jail for 10 years, stealing billions upon billions you get fined about 1 hrs worth of work and you continue to get to make a gillion dollars. No, the system is not gamed for the 1%. BTW, the 1% which was largely behind the world collapse, have simply gotten richer since 2008. Nice huh?
Rick
If you want an interesting read on the wild west of the global financial markets that lead to the 2008 collapse, I direct you all to this article in the Economist.
http://www.economist.com/news/schoolsbrief/21584534-effects-financial-crisis-are-still-being-felt-five-years-article
Lots of folks to blame – but largely the under-regulated financial markets seemed to be the biggest culprits.
Rick
Yah, right Rick, right, debunked by whom?
In your dreams.
For starters… Do you know what the Community Reinvestment act is?
CJ if you want to become edumacated, I suggest you not only read the Economist article, but review the history of the Act itself – pretty hard to make a case it played a significant role. But you can stick to the Sean Hanity version if you want.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Reinvestment_Act
Rick
Rick, there was greed everywhere, from the buyers of the homes who knew(or should have know, after all they were adults) that they could not afford, they were hoping that they could flip them for a mint before they were fforeclosed. I was a mortgage broker during this time(luckily only to corp employees who could prove they were qualified) there was indeed pressure from politicals (old barney esp)to make more loans, standards were loosed by Fannie n Freddie because of this pressure. Greenspan was warning about the housing market bubble for years before it burst. As far as mortgage brokers making only one third off subprime vs prime loa, i do have to giggle a little bit about your lack of knowledge on how the industry works. Making $500 for a prime loan must have been a loan amount of 20k. With service release fees, rebates on delievering a loan at a higher rate plus up front points you can makejust as much off of a prime loan, even fha n va loans 3 to 4 points were the norm.
reloman: while I agree we all in the short term seemed to profit (my portfolio did really well in the mid-2000s); only the 1% made out like bandits after 2008. As I suggest, the noise about loose mortgages is only a small part of the story; the financial markets played a much larger role as billions of on billions of dollars were changing hands. It is naive and uniformed if you actually believe that a the entire world collapse occurred because of some loans (only a small percentage in total were made to the undeserved or poorer community); most fancy loans were made to people making well over 6 figures on home they could only afford if the market keep growing.
I direct you to a Krugman piece from 2005, guess what, making loans to poor people had little to do with what was becoming the recognized housing bubble. Oh and Greenspan was a Johny come lately and he greatly downplayed the bubble.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/27/opinion/27krugman.html
I apologize for getting the figures wrong, but the mortgage brokers were making a very simple point, they were rewarded for making complicated loans (with higher interest rates), not easy ones for those of us who easily qualified.
No, the problem was complex, but centered mostly around wall street and corporate developers building faster the trees could be chopped down, bank regulators looking the other way, and the rest of us seemingly happy with skyrocketing portfolios. As I said, the middle class has largely suffered and only recovered somewhat, those of us not quite 1% have done decently and things are looking up, 93% of the income growth since 2009 has gone to the top 1%. Income inequality is at a all time high, to the point that some 1% are admitting this is unhealthy and unsustainable. See Nick Hanauer’s column to other 0.1% of 1%. http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/the-pitchforks-are-coming-for-us-plutocrats-108014.html#.U9iOvqjPB78
Rick
CJ is a paid shill and a plagiarist.
Dawg would have been better off had they been taught the merits of science, starting with the age of the earth. (please, entertain us by telling us how old the earth is according to your Big Old Dumb New Old Testament)
Relo was a mortgage broker….. ‘just doin my jawb’. Your industry is corrupt.
Okay, Fish; Not sure how you get away with calling somebody an “A HOLE” right out there where everybody can see it, but the slander has gone far enough. You accuse another person of being a “paid shill and a plagiarist”, so where’s your proof?
You can’t just come in here and call people names without offering SOMETHING to the conversation.
Grow up and say something new. Something constructive.
SLT reputation as a liberal trash heap of poorly educated low class trash and punked-out poor service is reflected here by the childish and naive writings from the chief of the pigeon brigade.
Sometimes reading this comment section is like reading what a 10-year old would be saying in a playground.
Your bad reputation is growing.
From here it gets worse, capiche?
“Sometimes reading this comment section is like reading what a 10-year old would be saying in a playground. section is like reading what a 10-year old would be saying in a playground”
Well CJ, by that benchmark your comments run closer to kindergartners in the sand box.
Time to move on.
LTN staff