7 Million People Haven’t Made A Single Student Loan Payment In At Least A Year

Tyler Durden's picture

Perhaps it’s all the talk about across-the-board debt forgiveness or maybe the total amount of outstanding student debt has simply grown so large ($1.3 trillion) that even those with no conception of how much money that actually is realize that it’s simply never going to paid back so there’s no point worrying about, but whatever the case, the general level of concern regarding America’s student debt bubble doesn’t seem to be at all commensurate with the size of the problem.

And it’s not just the sheer size of the debt pile that’s worrisome. There’s also the knock-on effects, such as delayed household formation and the attendant downward pressure on the homeownership rate, and of course hyperinflation in the rental market.

Of course one reason no one is panicking – yet – is that the severity of the problem is masked by artificially suppressed delinquency rates. As we’ve documented in excruciating detail, if one excludes loans in deferment and forbearance from the numerator in the delinquency calculation, but includes those loans in the denominator then the delinquency rate will be deceptively low. In any event, as WSJ reports, even if one looks at something very simple like, say, the number of borrowers who haven’t made a payment in a year, the picture is not pretty and it’s getting worse all the time. Here’s more:

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Bubble Trouble Strikes in China

A Scary Moment in Shanghai

In a brief update on stock markets around the world, the AP informs us:

 

“Chinese stocks plunged 7 percent Friday as fears spread that a yearlong bull rally there had gotten overheated. The market is still up more than 100 percent over the past year.”

 

Overheated is the understatement of the still fairly young century in this case. Millions of retail traders have opened new stock trading accounts in recent months, most of whom reportedly know between nothing and less than nothing about the stock market. Two thirds of the new traders entering the market apprently didn’t even finish high school (see chart further below). Margin debt has soared into the stratosphere along with the number of trading accounts and stock prices.

 

china-stock-market-rallyChinese grannies day-trading during lunch

Photo credit: Reuters

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