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posted by mrpg on Saturday February 18 2017, @10:01AM   Printer-friendly
from the dude-where's-my-bicycle dept.

Auto loan delinquencies in the fourth quarter hit their highest level since the financial crisis, a report out Thursday revealed.

About $23.27 billion in loans were 30 days or more late as of Dec. 31 — a whopping 14 percent increase from the year earlier and the most since the $23.46 billion in the third quarter of 2008, according to the New York Federal Reserve.

Delinquencies have moved up as the credit quality of the loans has deteriorated and the length of the auto loans has increased — sometimes to 84 months. [...] Delinquencies are the canary in the coal mine when it comes to losses for carmakers.

[...] The average monthly car payment in the fourth quarter rose above $500 for the first time, according to the credit-rating agency Experian.


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  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by anubi on Saturday February 18 2017, @12:25PM

    by anubi (2828) on Saturday February 18 2017, @12:25PM (#468556) Journal

    Especially if one is chartered to loan money that does not exist yet ( fractional reserve banking ).

    If I were to loan out my hammer, I would have to have a hammer in my possession to loan... but now, a banker, they can loan money they do not have, and receive usury on that which they did not have.

    Such a deal!

    The risk they take is they may not get their money back, yet have to carry this on their books, and won't be able to loan their "gratis" money to another sucker.

    Its surprising to me the system has run as long as it has without collapsing on itself because of debt/usury sucking up wealth that should have been directed into more productive enterprises instead of the entertainment of a banking elite. Things like public infrastructure. You know... roads, bridges, a good public internet, public healthcare, public education.

    Having a bunch of ignorant sick people around is no good for anybody.
     

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    "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 18 2017, @01:12PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 18 2017, @01:12PM (#468573)

    If only someone could borrow money and use it to build infrastructure. Wait really, they do that already. I'm shocked.

    • (Score: 1) by anubi on Sunday February 19 2017, @06:47AM

      by anubi (2828) on Sunday February 19 2017, @06:47AM (#468881) Journal

      That they do, all too much...

      The problem is now we are forced to pay usury to the banking elite, which never touched a shovel or drafting table, yet reap the usury of that which they are chartered to simply print up.

      In a way, I am just waiting for the FED to ratchet up rates again, just like Bernake did, so as to deliberately put the lower class into an inability to pay their bills, and crash the system again. This time, the FED can't drop rates substantially to restart the loan engine. They can crash this system anytime they want, but its gonna be really interesting to see what they do this time. Kinda like watching someone presented with a bill, when this time, they have nothing in their account.

      I was watching this happen as Obama was vying for the Presidency, and right before the election, Bernake was hocking up one rate hike after another, so that the economy would be in a free-fall right before election. What surprised me the most was watching Bush do absolutely nothing about it, while he was still in office, no less! Its as if he had absolutely no idea what was going on. It is my belief that Obama was voted into power from the resulting panic in the populace over the economy, for Bush was demonstrating he apparently knew nothing about people, already being heavily in debt, was losing everything and not able to pay the usury being imposed by the banking elite, while Obama was promising he would change things. I watched the Republicans give the shop away. Apparently, they were too high up to notice the woes of the 99%.

      I get the idea a good financial crash is right around the corner, judging from the frenzy of house flipping infomercials on TV, which I have noticed tend to arrive in a flurry right before a crash, as bankers try to get as much loans out there as possible, so they can later foreclose and reap back whatever equity the investors who took the advice of TV pitchmen had.

      Everyone is playing Musical Chairs, and the FED knows when they are going to lift the tone arm off the record.

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      "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
      • (Score: 2) by TheRaven on Sunday February 19 2017, @12:37PM

        by TheRaven (270) on Sunday February 19 2017, @12:37PM (#468919) Journal
        The problem is not usury. Banks provide a service, just like any other shopkeeper. A retailer does not create anything, but they serve a valuable function by providing a connection between producers of goods and consumers. Similarly, a bank provides a mechanism whereby the profits from producing goods or services can be made available to those creating value in other places of the economy. This is a valuable function, but unfortunately because their product is (other people's) money, banks seem to have convinced people that they deserve a much larger cut than any other form of retailer.
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        • (Score: 1) by anubi on Sunday February 19 2017, @12:57PM

          by anubi (2828) on Sunday February 19 2017, @12:57PM (#468924) Journal

          If I go to the store for a box of nuts, and they don't have any, I simply don't get any nuts.

          If I go to the bank for a box of dollars, they simply "create a ledger entry" that I owe them a box of dollars and then some, and its now up to me to get yet even more dollars to repay the debt. Combine this with everyone else in the same situation, and we have a global system where everyone is in debt, and the bankers live high on the hog doing nothing but collecting usury.

          Seems like every dollar out there is a dollar someone had to borrow from those who have the charter to print dollars out of thin air... while the rest of us have to work for them.

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          "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
          • (Score: 3, Informative) by TheRaven on Sunday February 19 2017, @01:38PM

            by TheRaven (270) on Sunday February 19 2017, @01:38PM (#468935) Journal

            You're conflating usury (taking money in exchange for providing access to capital) with fractional reserve banking. Fractional reserve banking is a mechanism that allows the supply of money to grow at the same rate as the economy. It's generally worked pretty well, though when the economy contracts it contracts the size of the money supply by calling in loans, which can cause a lot of problems. You need some mechanism that's roughly equivalent to this, because if the money supply doesn't expand as the economy expands (as happened with several currencies on precious metal standards, for example), then people suffer from a lack of liquidity: I produce something, but no one can buy it even though they have capital and a desire for it, so I can't then buy the things that I need and so on.

            Most of the objections to fractional reserve banking come from people failing to understand that the entire point of money is to track debt. If I buy something from you, then I am in debt to you for the (mutually agreed) value of that thing. I might not have something that you want right now, so I give you some tokens that represent this debt. You can then call in this debt on someone else who does have a thing that you want and pass the tokens on to them. As such, the amount of available money must reflect the amount of available debt, which, in turn, reflects the amount of production in the economy.

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            sudo mod me up