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.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Saturday February 18 2017, @06:59PM
This isn't really news since everyone who actually pays attention has seen this coming for years, even if you aren't a gloom and doomer reading zerohedge. To keep the factories turning at the automakers we have been pushing uneconomic loans out to people without the creditworthiness to repay them. The banks are happy to comply because the FED gives them 'free money' to do it with and they know when the bubble bursts Uncle Sugar will bail em out anyway. Same as every other bubble we have been blowing up and watching burst since forever. No this isn't Obama's fault, it isn't Bush's it has been going on since before we went off the Gold Standard even. It is the mechanism that drives the economic cycle modified by governments big enough to meddle and the political forces demanding they do so. I.e. The very definition of Keynesian economics.
So this is not news, if news is defined as reports of the unexpected. Three years ago this was news. If you see dark clouds it is probably going to rain, you do not need the weatherman at that point, you needed him two days ago to warn you the game was likely to be rained out. When you do stupid things, bad things will happen. It might become newsworthy if the kaboom! is more destructive than normal, but that it is going to happen has been baked in the cake for years.