Just as there is more than one way to skin a cat (apologies to the animal lovers out there), there are myriad ways to illustrate the extent of the economic and financial mess we are in.
As a fan of simple graphs that tell a powerful story, I couldn't resist the urge to highlight two charts featured in a recent post by the Sudden Debt blog, entitled "A More 'Personal' Look At Debt":
It is common enough to look at debt as a percentage of GDP, DPI, etc. but that's so... impersonal. So here are a couple of (very scary) charts that look at things from a dollars per person perspective (click on charts to enlarge).
Debt per person and GDP per person:
Debt per person and Disposable Personal Income per person:
Note: the Total Debt used to construct these chart does NOT include debt of the financial sector so as to avoid any double counting (e.g. a mortgage inside a CDO), even at the cost of somewhat understating the crush of debt. It's bad enough, anyway.
Hey, I liv e at poverty level.
Ne lookez pas chez moi!
Posted by: Terry | November 01, 2009 at 09:45 PM
A pity that the graphs stop at year 2000. Both graphs are linear. A logarithmic presentation might be more meaningful? TC.
Posted by: xpatUSA | November 02, 2009 at 08:11 AM
They stop at the end of 2008, not 2000 (the year is on 2 lines).
Posted by: Metzen | November 02, 2009 at 10:11 AM
One way to take care of debt
walk away!
Nearly 600K home "owners" did in 2008
http://www.fundmymutualfund.com/2009/11/nearly-600000-americans-walked-away.html
Posted by: Mark | November 03, 2009 at 02:43 PM