The problem

The costs of our consumer debts are spinning out of control.

Big banks, credit card companies, and auto finance lenders are using ever more clever and usurious tactics to squeeze hard-earned money out of increasingly desperate American families.

From home mortgage loans and credit card interest rates and fees, to the legal loan sharking of payday loans, more and more Americans are finding themselves trapped on the revolving debt treadmill while lenders’ profits and political power soar to unprecedented levels.

Even worse, the US Congress and other government officials are providing less regulatory relief to consumers while these corporate donors wield increasingly brazen and often anti-democratic influences on our political institutions.

Here are some facts

Total number of Americans: 300,000,000
Total consumer debt of Americans: $3,000,000,000,000

Average debt per U.S. household: $30,000
Number of households not paying off their credit card balances each month: 6 in 10
Average length of time, in months, spent paying off credit card debt: 43

Consumer bankruptcies in 1980: 287,463
Consumer bankruptcies in 2004: 1,500,000
Percent increase in bankruptcies: 422

Amount the average college student owes in loans by graduation: $30,000
Amount that same student owes in additional consumer debt: $20,000

Amount $1 invested in stocks in 1963 would have compounded to today: $12.36
Amount $1 invested in real estate in 1963 would have compounded to today: $1.79

Total in 2005 and 2006 lenders wrote in new home mortgages: $3,200,000,000,000
Net profit percentage annually by the major credit card companies: 54

Years it took for America to move from a society based on production to a nation driven by consumption: 25
Date when the first baby boomer will be eligible for early retirement: 1/1/2008

Click here to download the In Debt We Trust Facts Sheet in a PDF format