My feeble attempts to understand the impact that debt has on the real economy as debt payments (aka "the suck") grow so large that the economy can't sustain them anymore. Like now.

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

What's the Point?

If you look at the diagram of suckiness thumbnailed on the top right, you will see the "real economy" represented as a line between C (consumers) and B (businesses). The money circulating in that system is the economy's blood supply. Right now, loan payments (both principal and interest) are draining blood out of the system.

We know this because loan balances to businesses and consumers are dropping, even after we subtract writeoffs (writeoffs don't remove money from the system, only paydowns do).

The government has been giving the "real economy" transfusions via fiscal stimulus. But until bank loan books start growing, our economic body continues to be on life support. And bank loans are still shrinking. Which should be no surprise because the consumer remains leveraged to the hilt.

No growth in money supply means no growth in the economy: no new jobs, no new sales.