However, delinquencies at all other banks outside the top 100 have soared from less than 3% in 2015 to more than 6% today... higher than delinquencies at the same banks during the peak of the last crisis. Likewise, credit-card charge-off rates at the top 100 banks have risen from less than 3% to 3.7% over the past three years. But at all other banks, charge-offs have nearly doubled from roughly 4% to 7.6% today. So what explains this discrepancy? The largest banks have ramped up rewards and other credit-card incentives to attract customers. As a result, other banks have loosened credit standards – issuing credit cards to less creditworthy customers – to compensate. And like the mortgage crisis – when we saw trouble in the riskiest subprime mortgages first – these debts are the “canaries in the coal mine” of the larger consumer credit markets. Over the past 10 years, the government, corporations, and consumers alike have loaded up on record amounts of debt they have virtually no chance of paying back, fueling a credit “boom” that looks awfully familiar. We may not know when this boom will explode into a crisis, but make no mistake... it is coming.
Trump, considering his past gambles with the dictator, but the joint statement signed by both leaders lacked specifics. It’s reported that American officials negotiated intensely with the North and hoped the statement would be a road map to a nuclear deal. In the end, it was about two pages of language recycled from previous statements negotiated by North Korea over the last two decades. The statement reaffirmed Kim’s alleged promise to an “unwavering commitment to complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” while the U.S. agreed to “provide security guarantees” in exchange. But the statement provided neither a timeline nor any details about how North Korea would go about giving up its weapons. There was also no sign of Trump’s “nonnegotiable” demand that North Korea’s complete denuclearization be verifiable and irreversible. At a press conference, Trump insisted the agreement went further than many expected, but he acknowledged the denuclearization effort was in its early stages. He also hailed the talks as a historic, and personal, achievement. “We learned a lot about each other and our countries,” Trump said. “I learned he’s a very talented man.” While we won’t downplay the historical significance of this meeting, the last 20 years have seen the failure of at least three inter-Korean summits and years of failed multilateral peace talks... What could possibly go wrong?
North Korea denuclearized?
Months of feuding and political posturing ended this week when President Donald Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un met for a first-of-its-kind summit between the two countries. The meeting was a clear victory for
American Consequences 15
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