Independent thinking for complex markets and current events
The middle class dream didn’t disappear, it just learned to smile through the struggle. Middle Class wealth is a mirage. Your friend with the nice car? It’s financed. Your cousin’s vacation? On a credit card. Your coworker living “alone”? Three roommates you never see. This is the real America. Struggling quietly, flexing publicly. — middleclassparty …
$745 per month. That is the average new car payment in 2025. Most buyers are falling behind. Auto debt is surging. And people are trapped in loans stretching six years. Six years of payments. Six years of chains (CarBuzz). Experian confirms it. $745 per month for new vehicles. $521 for used. Even with 72-month loans, …
Who financed this? That seems like a lot of effort to be putting into anti-Trump displays. pic.twitter.com/CjYGAvwWJM — Ian Miles Cheong (@ianmiles) April 6, 2025
The delayed day of reckoning has arrived for millions of Americans who purchased vehicles during the pandemic auto boom. Many are now finding themselves trapped in a shitstorm of negative equity and burdened by costly monthly payments, all while low- and mid-tier consumers face mounting financial strain amid elevated inflation and high interest rates. Bloomberg …
It's hard to understate just how unprecedented the scale of US fiscal stimulus is at the moment. Not only is the deficit massive for a non-crisis period, but its financing is almost entirely via very short-term issuance, which has never been the case before in a non-crisis time. pic.twitter.com/3mQWWPb7ds — Robin Brooks (@robin_j_brooks) May 30, …