Friday, June 6, 2008

Debt Information From the Flow of Funds Report

The Federal Reserve has released the latest Flow of Funds report. This is a veritable goldmine of economic information about the US economy. There are a few points that really stand out to my mind.

All the figure area annually projected numbers.

Total debt outstanding -- that is personal, corporate and government debt outstanding -- is $31.758 trillion. Total US GDP is $14.196 trillion. That means that there is 2.23 times the amount of debt in the US relative to the total value of the US economy.

Total household debt is $13.960 trillion. That means total household debt as a percentage of GDP is 98.33%. Disposable income at the national level is $10.502 trillion. That means that total household debt is 132.92% of disposable income at the national level.

That's a ton of debt, isn't it?