Anyone else shocked by this figure?

[dre]

Well, I don't disagree, but I still find the OP's comparison of the Smartphone addicts to the Good Old Days seems a bit unreasonable. The 'Good Old Days' carried more debt than the previous generation and so on. Throughout the centuries people were quite self-reliant, but now (most) people don't have the resources to build their own house and grow their own food.

It's supply and demand. The banks are providing a commodity for a demand that's out there and it's not a want as the OP states, it's a need.

The end result of this need is a consumer-based society which will go up and down and back up again. It's not the banks' fault and it's not society's frivolous greed (as per OP).

But don't get me wrong, if you have a better solution I'm all ears.

Sure. Stop pretending recessions are the end of the world, when in fact they are medicine that fixes the economy. Use stimilus and monetary easing more sparingly.

For example... our big plan to avoid the last recession was to dump a big swack of cash into the markets and lower interest rates. That prevented a natural market correction in realestate, and kept our bubble inflated. We are going to pay for that. And it depleted peoples savings the the point where we at high risk of having an even bigger recession.

These policies dont actually fix anything. They just kick the can down the road a little bit, and make the problem bigger. Thats why the business cycle is getting more and more violent and destructive. If you could really create wealth by printing money then we could just all be rich and nobody would have to do any work.

Canada is headed for a deep recession, and a double digit devaluation in realestate.

With debt-to-income ratios at an all-time high around 150%, Canadians have stretched themselves to the limit since the recession and have left little head room to buffer against another economic downturn, Moody’s suggests in the report released Thursday.

“With the economy now relying heavily on the continued expansion of household spending, any retrenchment in the consumer sector will likely place the economy on the brink of a second recession,” the report’s authors say.

And when the recession eventually hits (probably near the end of 2013) what is the central bank going to do to stimulate spending then? Pay YOU interest to borrow money

Edited September 11, 2012 by dre

[jacee]

Sure. Stop pretending recessions are the end of the world, when in fact they are medicine that fixes the economy. Use stimilus and monetary easing more sparingly.

For example... our big plan to avoid the last recession was to dump a big swack of cash into the markets and lower interest rates. That prevented a natural market correction in realestate, and kept our bubble inflated. We are going to pay for that. And it depleted peoples savings the the point where we at high risk of having an even bigger recession.

These policies dont actually fix anything. They just kick the can down the road a little bit, and make the problem bigger. Thats why the business cycle is getting more and more violent and destructive. If you could really create wealth by printing money then we could just all be rich and nobody would have to do any work.

Canada is headed for a deep recession, and a double digit devaluation in realestate.

And when the recession eventually hits (probably near the end of 2013) what is the central bank going to do to stimulate spending then? Pay YOU interest to borrow money