Consumer Debt Explodes Higher as Americans Grapple with Bidenflation
Consumer borrowing accelerated by far more than expected in September, as American households dealt with rising prices by swiping their credit cards and taking out more loans.
Total consumer credit increased $29 billion, up from a $13.8 billion gain in August, according to data released by the Federal Reserve Friday.
Economists had been expecting a $15.5 billion gain, according to Econoday.
That’s a monthly gain of 0.7 percent, well above the decade average of 0.4 percent. Compared with a year ago, consumer debt is up 4.9 percent.
Consumer prices rose 0.4 percent in September and were up 5.4 percent compared with the prior September.
The gain in September translates into an annual growth rate of 8.3 percent in September, a big pick up from the 3.8 percent pace in August.
Revolving credit, which is mostly credit cards, rose 11.8 percent, which follows a 3.4 percent gain in August.
Expansions in revolving credit can be an indicator of economic confidence and can help an economy grow. But they can also be a signal of economic distress if cash-strapped households are turning to credit to make up for income gaps.
Nonrevolving credit—which is mostly auto and student loans—rose 7.2 percent. These loans were up 4 percent in August.
The Fed’s consumer credit data does not count mortgages, the biggest type of household debt.
Consumer
Sen. Blackburn: Democrats’ Amnesty Invites Endless Cheap Labor
President Joe Biden plans to fix the border meltdown by inviting economic migrants to come in legally, Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) said in a conversation with Stephen Miller, the former immigration deputy in President Donald Trump’s White House.
The legal changes are buried in the Democrats’ Build Back Better bill, which is scheduled for a House vote as early as Friday, November 5.
If the Democrats’ bill becomes law, Biden “is going to be able to say, ‘Hey, we got the border under control,'” Blackburn told Miller.
“Well, no,” she added. “What [Biden] did was to open a door over here where [he’s] going to let people pay $2,500 … Come in, get citizenship, and then reap the benefits,” she said.
“You’re not supposed to be changing law in a reconciliation budget bill,” she added. Democrats “know this would never pass, so they’re going to try to get this provision through in the [fast-track] budget bill, and we want to get the word out on it.” Miller responded:
It’s really important that people speak out about this as much as they can. As you know from personal experience, most Democrats in Congress just do what they’re told by [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi and [Senate Majority Leader Chuck] Schumer and do not exercise any independent thought whatsoever.
Miller described the pending immigration changes in the Democrats’ bill.
“Little attention has been given to the immigration provisions, which are truly breathtaking in scope and would completely, completely, reorder American society,” he said, adding:
First, and simplest really, is a giant amnesty for most of the nation’s illegal immigrant population …
The second is a very shocking provision, which I know you, Senator, have been very concerned about, which allows people to effectively Buy American citizenship for a relatively small fee …
How does it do this? Under federal law, there are some categories of immigration that are expressly capped [at roughly one million per year for all legal immigration].
These categories include chain migration and foreign workers [hired by U.S. companies]. So there are specific [annual] caps Congress has established on both of these to ensure that there isn’t unlimited immigration, that there’s some measure of control, as every society has. In fact, a lot of people would argue, if anything, that the caps are too generous.
What this bill does is, it says even if you can’t get into the country right away — because there’s a [annual] cap on chain migration or a cap on foreign-worker migration, for a fee of $2,500 for a family of chain migrants, or for a fee of $5,000 for foreign workers — that would primarily be in the big tech space — you can get a green card, come to America, stay here for life.
So literally, an unlimited number of people can come into the country for this fee, be put on a path to citizenship, no special criteria, no merit-based sorting, no demonstration of any particular contribution. It’s just “Give the money and get in.”
The bill is a huge threat to Americans who want to earn college degrees to better their lives, he said:
It will mean that if you’re a college student graduating in Tennessee and you want to go work for one of these big technology companies, make a great living, and be able to support your family, [the companies] can just instead go get a foreign worker for much less than they would pay an American worker.
That I think is a great tragedy, and I’m frankly astonished that this has been put in the bill without getting any real national attention.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) also focused on the section’s impact for American technology grads in a November 3 op-ed at Fox News.
The current draft of the Democrat’s bill also includes a nearly unprecedented assault on the livelihoods of American tech workers. In service of their big money donors, Democrats intend to authorize green cards for hundreds of thousands of foreign tech workers. On day one, Democrats want to open the floodgates to 200,000 such workers.
The tech industry has been subsidized with cheap foreign labor for long enough. Silicon Valley should invest in upskilling the American workforce instead of using their money to lobby Congress for a new giveaway.
Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN) is also calling attention to the bill’s green-cards-for-cash rule.
Many polls show that labor migration is deeply unpopular because it damages ordinary Americans’ career opportunities, cuts their wages, and raises their rents. Migration also curbs Americans’ productivity, shrinks their political clout, widens regional wealth gaps, and radicalizes their democratic, compromise-promoting civic culture.
For many years, a wide variety of pollsters have shown deep and broad opposition to labor migration and the inflow of temporary contract workers into jobs sought by young U.S. graduates. This opposition is multiracial, cross-sex, non-racist, class-based, bipartisan, rational, persistent, and recognizes the solidarity Americans owe to each other.
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