Aram Zucker-Scharff

On the NASDAQ, the peak of the real estate bubble in late 2007 was about $2,800. When the bubble popped, the index lost 50% of it’s value.

At the current rate of market rise, we are on track to double the total value of the pre-bubble peak market midway into the next year, exceeding $5,000 on the index.

The only time the index, in the entirety of history, broke $5,000 was the late 90s/early 00s tech bubble, after which the index lost 80% of its value.

What’s the difference between the tech bubble then and the bubble now? The tech crash hurt a narrow piece of the market, its effect was proportionate on the industry causing it (visible in the DJ Industrial Index). The same was not true of the real estate crash which, because it was caused by heavy leverage in the banking systems, caused crunch across the board.

The DJI lost a little more than one quarter of its value in the dot-com crash. In the real-estate crisis it lost about half. It too has more than doubled since the late 00s.

Now imagine the bubble we are in now, the largest rise since 2000, having the same crash, but one in which not just the bad actors see their stock drop 80%, but the entire market.

Why think about this now? When I was born in 1987 the NASDAQ Composite was at ~$455. As of this month, it’s broken $4,555. A 1000% rise.

Significant rise in CS-course-takers at Harvard.
If CS classes at Harvard follow the same economic patterns as MBAs? Expect the tech bubble to pop, within the next 5 years.

Report: Student Loan Debt Isn’t Just An Issue For Young Americans:

The US Government has discovered a new way to make social security last.

When older Americans were hit by the real estate crisis and driven further into debt, they had to stop paying their student loan debt. Now the Federal government is withholding funds from social security, medicare and *survivor* payouts to these people who THOUGHT they had achieved the American dream, driving retirees in the HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS into poverty.

THAT’s the future America has laid out for the rising generation. We, who hold more student debt than combined previous generations, can look to the present to see grandparents held down by endless, lifelong, student debt. Look at them, and think about what the future holds.

“An analysis of data from the Survey of Consumer Finances found that 3% of households – about 706,000 households – headed by those ages 65 years or older carry student loan debt. Although, the student debt level for those 64 years or younger is significantly higher – 22 million households, the issues faced by older American’s who tend to live on fixed incomes can’t be discounted.

The percentage of households headed by those aged 65 to 74 years of age with student debt grew from just 1 percent in 2004 totaling $2.8 billion to about 4 percent, or $18.2 billion in 2013.

The real issue is the number of older Americans who hold defaulted federal student loans – nearly a quarter of older American’s loans are in default – which often leaves the retirees living below the poverty threshold.”

Be f*cking furious.

Millennials speak up on rejecting credit: Jobs are scarce. Pay is low. School debt is high.:

Readers chime in as to why young people are avoiding credit cards.

It frustrates me that the coverage of this recent report is totally ahistoric. Pre-2006 it didn’t matter that you didn’t have a job and had a loan, credit card companies were signing students on campuses up left and right. That they aren’t anymore and that individuals don’t feel the need to get a card, isn’t a story of some victory over economic expectations, a failure to grow, or unemployment. 

This is a story about the mistakes of the previous generation, what an overage of credit did before and could do again; why the underlying economic shift away from personal debt is incredibly depressing and dangerous for consumers and the middle class.

Credit cards and credit card companies are AWFUL. But the lack of availability of credit to individuals compared with significant outlays of credit to banks and large corporate entities (and the inflation that accompanies it) is THE story. 

It’s the story of our ongoing tailspin into complete economic inequality and one that tells us about a dark future for Millennials that has nothing to do with carrying balances or avoiding debt and EVERYTHING to do with our increasing inability to access the means by which wealth is created.