Americans Are In Debt Up To Their Eyeballs And Smashing The Worst Kinds Of Records
This is not a convenient time to be racking up debt.
By JONATHAN WOLF, Above the Law
The United States banned debtors’ prisons under federal law in 1833. That sure didn’t stop us from kind of just turning the whole country into a big debtors’ prison though.
It wasn’t that long ago when Americans achieved their highest personal savings rate on record. Still, Americans have generally been much better spenders than savers throughout the modern era — hardly shocking given that several of the largest and most powerful companies in existence make almost all their money from advertising.
