MONEY TROUBLES:  Increasingly, Americans at all levels are feeling the squeeze from the Biden economy, and it will get worse.  From CNBC:

More consumers are leaning on credit cards to afford increasingly expensive necessities like food and rent.

That helped propel total credit card debt to a record $930.6 billion at the end of 2022, a 18.5% spike from a year earlier, according to the latest quarterly report by TransUnion. The average balance rose to $5,805 over that same period.

At this rate, households are nearing a "breaking point," according to a separate study by WalletHub.

More from Personal Finance:

Using the Great Recession as a guide, the projected breaking point is the level of household credit card debt that will become unsustainable for most people, according to Jill Gonzalez, an analyst at WalletHub.

"It's when people won't be able to keep up with their bills," she said. "We're inching closer and closer to that breaking point."

Delinquencies are already on the rise, TransUnion found. A delinquency is a payment that's 60 days or more overdue.

"The increase in delinquencies is something to watch," said Michele Raneri, vice president of U.S. research and consulting at TransUnion. As long as unemployment stays down, households are better able to pay their bills, she noted. "If unemployment goes up, and we see a spike in delinquencies, then that indicates a longer-term problem."

For now, the number of job openings still far outnumber available workers, according to the U.S. Department of Labor's recent Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey.

Credit cards are one of the most expensive ways to borrow money. Currently, annual percentage rates are around 20%, an all-time high.

If the Federal Reserve announces a half-point increase in its benchmark rate at the March meeting, those APRs will climb even higher. That will cost credit card borrowers an extra $3.4 billion in interest charges over the next 12 months, WalletHub calculated.

"Something has to give," Gonzalez said. It's time to rein in spending, pay off debt and avoid any new debt, she added.

COMMENT:  The key point here is that credit card debt isn't an abstraction.  Like inflation, it's faced by individuals and families across the nation.  The pain is growing, and how people will react politically is anyone's guess.  Desperate people can do desperate things.  Theoretically, Republicans should benefit from discontent with the Biden economy, but don't count on it.  The Dems have all kinds of reckless gimmicks to unleash on the nation, like free money of the kind we got during the pandemic.  Kinda keeps the voters in line.  Never solves the problem.

March 9, 2023