Subject: Re: Control Panel: Middle-class vibe
While there have been some posts about the rise in credit card debtover the past few months, none have addressed this by parsing which income tranch it belongs to. Most of the top income strata takes it for granted that their credit cards are religiously paid off in-full on-time. In this context, there has been an increase in luxury cruise bookings this yeaar and it would be reasonable to assume that the vast majority of this money will not end up in the past-due pile. On the other hand, most of those who live hand-to-mouth pay in cash (or food stamps) and their low (and therefore, low credit limits on any credit cards they may have) incomes mean that getting into trouble with credit cards is less likely.

That means that the majority of credit card delinquancy is likely by the middle class. Credit cards charge usurous rates for this "privalege" and getting out of debt is problematic. It would be interesting to compare the debt/time curves to periods of finacial stress in the past.

Now, to the "investing class". It is clear that as long as money is "free", there is an argument to continue the leveraging of buying investments (whether stocks, real estate, cryptocurrency or other assets). Boring stuff is ignored - example: Pfizer (PFE) has a current divident of about 7%, has raised its dividend for the past 16 years and, while there is uncertanty about the future of the COVID vaccine, that's not the only card in Pfizer's deck. Similar examples could be Kraft-Heinz, Nestle and so on. The international scope of companies like this should protect them somewhat by ?"inflating" their prices along with the USD and their dividends are taxed at lower rates than, say most bonds. So, people are apparently betting at tables where the chance of reward might be greater (without evaluating the price of potential failure).

So, the dangers to the upper finacial strata of the population are very different than the middle clas (or those at the bottom), but the impact on the top strata of a finacial dive will also pound those of the middle class who are in debt and might lose their jobs.

Moral: Makle lots of money, but have a game plan in case of a black swan (Buffet's game plan seems to be to stockpile money and pick up bargains when the fit hits the Shan (thank you Roger Zelasny, "Lord of Light").

Jeff