At the end of last year, total household indebtedness was $13.54 trillion, a $32 billion increase from the third quarter of 2018. By Michelle Singletary Michelle Singletary Personal finance columnist Email Bio Follow Columnist April 23 at 4:01 PM I recently saw the play “Junk,” a retrospective of the 1980s, when Wall Street junk-bond kings were revered and then reviled.
With some perspective, “Junk” is a look at not just conniving, greedy financiers, but also the legacy they left. You know the story — corporate raiders, insider trading, rigged stock purchases, employees laid off and, finally, a company buried under so much acquisition debt that it ultimately collapses.
Auto loan originations for 2018 reached an all-time high, and some can't handle the debt load. More than 7 million Americans were 90 days or more behind on their auto loan at the end of 2018. “The overall performance of auto loans has been slowly worsening,” the Fed reported. "You know city councils and state governments will follow,” he says. “Then consumers. And then what? Then we're not a country anymore. And the only thing we'll be making in America? Debt."
Outstanding student-loan debt was $1.46 trillion in the fourth quarter last year, according to the Fed. And it’s becoming too much for a lot of those borrowers — 11.4 percent of those loans were 90-plus days delinquent or in default.