<story><title>The Most Counterintuitive Recession Ever</title><url>https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2020/08/the-most-counterintuitive-recession-ever/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>treyfitty</author><text>What is baffling is how the delinquency rates for credit cards have plummeted.  Sure, it&amp;#x27;s easy to say in hindsight that people are buckling down, and that the stimulus payments are making it easier for those in the low income demographic to pay down credit card debt, but that can&amp;#x27;t be the complete picture.&lt;p&gt;The economy was put on pause, and small businesses are being decimated.  If people need financing, the status quo was to use credit card debt to keep people&amp;#x2F;business afloat as the debt is unsecured.&lt;p&gt;As the article posits, the situation is quite unique and very counterintuitive...</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rectang</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;What is baffling is how the delinquency rates for credit cards have plummeted.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Mortgage deferments!  If you can stop paying your mortgage for a while, then you have more money to pay down your credit cards.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Most Counterintuitive Recession Ever</title><url>https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2020/08/the-most-counterintuitive-recession-ever/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>treyfitty</author><text>What is baffling is how the delinquency rates for credit cards have plummeted.  Sure, it&amp;#x27;s easy to say in hindsight that people are buckling down, and that the stimulus payments are making it easier for those in the low income demographic to pay down credit card debt, but that can&amp;#x27;t be the complete picture.&lt;p&gt;The economy was put on pause, and small businesses are being decimated.  If people need financing, the status quo was to use credit card debt to keep people&amp;#x2F;business afloat as the debt is unsecured.&lt;p&gt;As the article posits, the situation is quite unique and very counterintuitive...</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>newacct583</author><text>&amp;gt; If people need financing, the status quo was to use credit card debt to keep people&amp;#x2F;business afloat as the debt is unsecured.&lt;p&gt;Was it?  How much of the total credit debt held in the US was being used to weather short term cash shortfalls like this?&lt;p&gt;It seems like a more reasonable hypothesis is that &amp;quot;most&amp;quot; credit debt in fact was being used to finance luxury expenditures by the middle class instead, and that when these were suppressed by the pandemic along with everything else credit spending dropped.&lt;p&gt;Note also that for people in the first category, the very generous UI and stimulus benefits we available to bridge the gap too.  We&amp;#x27;ll see what happens now that most of these are being rolled back or replaced with more regressive measures like the payroll tax suspension (which only benefits people who are employed).</text></comment>