[HN Gopher] US car repossessions surge as more Americans default...
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US car repossessions surge as more Americans default on auto loans
Author : Physkal
Score : 112 points
Date : 2025-10-17 21:13 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| dijit wrote:
| It's an extremely inconvenient situation that Americans find
| themselves in, a sort of self-perpetuating cycle of car
| dependency that they reinforce because alternatives require far
| too much investment to make worthwhile.
|
| I'm really glad that I can live in a city without _having_ to own
| a car if I don 't want to. It makes a significant difference to
| my monthly expenses. And, honestly, it's a lot nicer and feels a
| lot more free in many ways. Places are _more_ accessible not
| less.
|
| I can't imagine being on the bottom rung of society and having
| _yet another_ awkward expense, especially because you become
| unreliable if you don 't properly invest in the maintenance of
| the thing. Which might cause you to lose your income altogether.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| For lots of America alternatives don't take that much
| investment. Creating a safe bike network would be relatively
| cheap and is feasible in large swaths of suburbs.
| dijit wrote:
| Due to the aforementioned car dependence: points of interest
| are further apart from each other than in other cities with
| solid cycling infrastructure (in Europe for example).
|
| Enormous car-lots several times larger than the buildings
| that they serve for example, sprawling 6-lane roads that take
| 20s to clear a junction on a slow moving bicycle, these
| things contribute to it being infeasible for more poeple.
|
| Connecting the bike lanes is not a problem, though people
| will fight it tooth and nail because they wan't all
| infrastructure spending to go to _cars_... hence, reinforcing
| the issue, because when all you have is a hammer...
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| Yes, they are further apart than they need to be, but they
| still tend to be within relatively short cycling distance.
| At certain times cycling is even faster than driving due to
| gridlock traffic, even in suburbs. For example, this very
| moment, because the main way through town is clogged with
| parents picking their kids up from school.
|
| I think a majority of the problem is cultural and/or
| political. I know people who take a longer drive over a
| shorter bike ride (due to gridlock traffic).
| oblio wrote:
| Bikes can reach remarkably far in flat areas if the
| infrastructure is there. And with a folding bike you only
| need 1 bus as a range extender to go really far. However
| lots of money is relying on both those things not
| happening.
| Retric wrote:
| It doesn't take that much to for huge numbers of people to be
| able to transfer to car free existence. Zoning laws inside
| cities do a amazing amount to force cars on millions of
| Americans.
|
| Car free access to existing transit hubs like metro stations is
| often horrible and not particularly expensive to improve.
| arjvik wrote:
| > if you don't properly invest in the maintenance of the thing
|
| For me, it's not the money that's annoying (though of course
| I'm not pleased by the bills every once in a while). It's the
| amount of time it takes to keep a car maintained! Seems like
| just yesterday I took a whole day remote to sit at the
| mechanics shop for a tire change, but now I have to do the same
| for an oil change! For this precise reason I end up doing a lot
| of maintenance late.
| hyghjiyhu wrote:
| I haven't done it myself but isn't a tire change suppose to
| be pretty easy thing to do, certainly better than sitting the
| whole day in the shop?
| maxerickson wrote:
| Usually it involves swapping the new tires onto the rims.
| It's not easy to do.
| MegaDeKay wrote:
| Plus balancing the new tires on those rims, and next to
| nobody has the gear to do that.
| Ccecil wrote:
| When I last priced the equipment it wasn't that bad
| costwise. In my case though it was only worth it to get
| rid of the whole "dealing with tire shops" issue. A close
| friend owns a used car dealership and they bought the
| mounter and balancer. IIRC...it just needed a 240v line.
|
| I have also lost days waiting for tire shops and
| alignment...as those are the only 2 things I don't do
| myself.
| greedo wrote:
| First you have to get big bulky tires delivered to wherever
| you're going to install them on to your wheel rims. Then
| you need equipment to remove the old tires from your rims,
| and install the new ones on the rims. Next you need to
| balance the tires, then you need to take care of all the
| TPMS components. After this you need to mount your tires.
| Forget something? Too bad your car is out of commission til
| all the above is done.
| conception wrote:
| This is my favorite thing about getting an EV; effectively
| zero maintenance except for tires.
| technion wrote:
| I keep seeing this argument but I think about whats broken
| in my ice over the years: brakes, control arms, struts,
| suspension springs. You get a pass on gearbox but as a
| genuine question, do these usual mechanical problems that
| have nothing to do with the engine jist not happen on EVs?
| Ccecil wrote:
| Bushings and suspension parts will likely have similar
| (or possibly worse) wear than an IC based car due to the
| extra weight. Brakes a bit less possibly since you can
| use the regenerative braking but this also depends
| largely on the driver and situation.
|
| *This is an assumption based on my experience with cars
| in general and doing my own repairs/maintenance not a
| slam on EVs.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| You need to find a new mechanic if it is taking them an
| entire day to replace tires or do an oil change.
| Marsymars wrote:
| Locally to me, it's pretty uncommon for any mechanics, tire
| shops, etc. to give any sort of timeline for any sort of
| service.
|
| I recently had a 1-hour job done on my car - the only
| appointment my local mechanic takes is for a specific date
| - you drop off first thing in the morning, and they call
| you when they're done.
|
| I also just called my local tire shop to enquire about
| mounting/balancing (but not installing) tires - they don't
| take appointments for that, but also don't guarantee any
| particular speed of service - you drop off your tires, and
| they call you when they're done, whether it's that day or
| the next.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Or just do it yourself. At least oil changes can be done
| entirely oneself with a very small number of non-
| specialized tools. You don't even need a house with a
| garage, you can do it in your driveway or even on the
| street if you only have street parking.
|
| As others have pointed out, tires are somewhat more
| complicated, but not entirely out of the realm of the home
| shade tree mechanic, if you're willing to invest in a few
| specialized tools/fixtures.
| linguae wrote:
| Unfortunately, there are some apartment complexes, HOAs,
| and city ordinances that prohibit people from working on
| their cars, which means either needing to find a legal
| place to do your own repairs or paying a mechanic. I've
| lived in apartments my entire adult life thus far, and
| every lease I've signed has prohibited me from repairing
| my cars on apartment grounds. I have no choice but to
| either find a friend with a garage (not easy in the Bay
| Area when most of my friends can't afford garages) or
| taking my car to a mechanic and paying Bay Area labor
| costs.
| olyjohn wrote:
| It's not that it takes all day to do the work. It's that
| you get to your "appointment" and they really haven't set
| aside any time for you. You're just put in line like the
| next walk up guy.
| supportengineer wrote:
| The tire shop near me (America's Tire) has changed all four
| tires, with zero advance notice, in one hour.
| ifyoubuildit wrote:
| I'm glad you have that opportunity too, but purely on the
| financials it's probably not so much of a win when you consider
| the heightened cost of everything (housing in particular) in a
| city, right?
| SecretDreams wrote:
| Depends when you got into it. If you're an older gen, you got
| into that city early and are likely unburdened by high
| dwelling costs - instead, you've got a windfall of
| appreciation ahead of you.
|
| Reality is, outside of housing, city life is generally
| cheaper because it's much more accessible and the tax base is
| better suited to covering those expenses. So, older
| generations get the best of all worlds, per usual.
| carabiner wrote:
| > Outside of housing
|
| > Outside of what makes it more expensive for virtually
| everyone, it is actually cheaper
| SecretDreams wrote:
| Pull up the age demographics for any major city. The
| older demographics largely got into housing at more
| affordable times and are less sensitive to rent and
| mortgage prices increasing. Housing costs is a cost that
| OVERWHELMINGLY impacts younger demographics.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| Depends on the city.
|
| Chicago is cheaper than car dependent LA in terms of rent.
|
| You can do very well on a modest salary.
| dangus wrote:
| You don't have to be in a large or even a medium sized city
| for car dependency to be alleviated. There's a not just bikes
| video about this exact thing.
|
| https://youtu.be/ztpcWUqVpIg
| dijit wrote:
| I live in Malmo which is across the bridge from Copenhagen.
|
| It's _not comparable_ to the US in terms of Salary, but if I
| compare to the same size City in the UK (Coventry), it 's
| _not_ more expensive to live here than there. Coventry has a
| decent amount of car dependency for its size.
|
| If we're comparing to a US City, I guess Orlando is pretty
| close (Orlando has a lower population than Malmo), but home
| prices are higher. However, there are _only larger houses
| available_ making the comparison a bit squiff.
| epistasis wrote:
| Cities are artificially expensive becuase we ban them in
| nearly every location in the US, and ban new housing in
| cities.
|
| It would have been an easy fix 10+ years ago, but as the
| housing crisis got worse and the working class was priced
| out, building got a lot more expensive and we have a huge
| labor crisis in addition to the regulatory crisis.
|
| All solvable, but the political establishment and the
| political power base (homeowners and landlords) are dead set
| against solving it.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Converting away from cars costs almost nothing compared to
| continuing cars. The project to put California route 37 above
| water near the Sonoma-Marin County line is going to cost $10
| billion without adding any capacity. That's one tiny little
| project. And people don't even want to attach a number to the
| external cost of pollution.
| itsme0000 wrote:
| It's honestly becoming a national subculture. Being a
| "burnout". In tech burnout means you're exhausted on working on
| things. In America "a burnout" is someone so deeply in debt
| they don't even try to really pay it off, they just ignore the
| debt and spend money on cheap thrills when they can. Obviously
| not something that you advertise about yourself, but go to any
| bar in rural south and they know what am talking about.
|
| As bad as the debt situation is in the US there's not much a
| collection agency can do to force you to pay relatively petty
| sums under 100,000 they will just harass you basically.
|
| The Roman proverb goes "The begger laughs in the face of the
| bandit" so burnouts spread money before it can be taken from
| them, then turn around and beg for more. A person who's
| established this mentality, the exact amount they owe is the
| least of there problems.
| rayiner wrote:
| This is an extremely privileged viewpoint. Even in Tokyo,
| people in the bottom half of the income distribution do not
| live close enough to popular transit lines to be as mobile as
| someone with a beater car in Dallas. They spend a lot more time
| commuting (and they can't "just do some work on the train"
| because they have real jobs). Even in Tokyo, their commutes are
| crowded, they're subject to the weather.
|
| Being tied to transit lines--again, because even in Tokyo
| transit isn't as convenient as point-to-point car travel--
| limits where people can look for jobs. That makes it a poverty
| trap because people can't easily find jobs in different areas.
| And it makes having a family and kids much more logistically
| complicated. The most transit-dependent cities have abysmal
| birth rates.
| dijit wrote:
| It's only privileged because I'm living in a city that has
| actively prioritised other modes of transport.
|
| I invite you to compare Orlando and Malmo.
|
| If you have the opportunity to visit both, I would recommend
| it. They have the same population size (actually, Malmo has
| more people in it, but, close enough) yet in one it's
| impossible to get across the street without a car, even to go
| to the grocery store, and the other has entire portions of
| the city where cars aren't even able to go. -- Yet everyone
| manages to get around, and most people would consider it very
| convenient to do so.
| vkou wrote:
| That beater car in Dallas is also a financial millstone
| around its owners neck, and odds are, he's already living
| hand to mouth, and has zero redundancy for it.
|
| If that weren't so often the case, people wouldn't lose their
| shit whenever gas goes up 50 cents/gallon.
| macNchz wrote:
| The cycle of car costs, repairs, and impacts of breakdowns
| for under-privileged people is a pretty serious poverty trap
| in places that have no other options.
| https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/04/us/trump-tariffs-used-
| car...
| gensym wrote:
| It sucks that you need to own a car to get anywhere in most of
| the US. When my wife and I moved to Southern California from
| Chicago, we had a single car and tried to make that work for a
| while, but it was just not doable. We have a grocery store 2
| miles away, but any other services are further than walking
| distance (and even the grocery store requires walking on the
| shoulder of a busy arterial road at a couple points. I used to
| bike everywhere in Chicago, but doing so here is too risky).
|
| That said, the problems of car loans are far beyond that - From
| the article: " The average monthly repayment now stands at more
| than $750.". That's nuts! I make a solid upper middle-class
| income, and I can't imagine spending that much on car
| financing, regardless of the loan length. When we needed a
| second car, we bought a 6-year-old Volvo station wagon in good
| condition, it it's still serving us well. Many of my neighbors,
| who make about half what I do, think we're poor because of it.
| oblio wrote:
| If the Volvo us well taken care of, it will probably last
| decades more.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Exactly. This is going to come off as incredibly privileged,
| but I'm not a huge fan of car loans. In fact, I'm not a huge
| fan of leveraging to afford _any_ asset unless it 's
| appreciating in value or generating income. I buy and drive
| old, nearly junker cars because I can't afford a $40K new
| car. I can "afford" the monthly payments on a $40K car, but
| it's just a terrible financial idea. Totally nutty. A $750
| monthly payment (I don't even want to know the term) for
| something that is losing value every day is absolutely
| bonkers.
|
| The amount of debt Americans routinely and causally take on
| is honestly ridiculous.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| The problem with old junkers is that if you don't have the
| money in cash, how do you fix a major car repair? You can
| get a loan for a new car with money.
|
| The car "generates income" because it allows you to get to
| work and hopefully make more than your car note.
| _heimdall wrote:
| Old car repairs generally don't cost as much as you'd
| expect, especially when you aren't paying $750/no on a
| loan plus higher insurance premiums.
|
| My mechanics often perk up when I bring in my 80s era
| pickup. It has very low miles, they can generally
| diagnose it with very basic tools, and parts are cheap.
| When I have the time to work on it myself I appreciate it
| for those exact same reasons.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| And when you buy the car hypothetically and the motor
| goes out or the transmission within three months?
|
| And it's one thing if your car breaks down on a side
| street, it's completely different if it breaks down on an
| interstate. If you have a daughter would you be
| comfortable with her driving an unreliable car? Your
| wife? Your mother?
| _heimdall wrote:
| Sure, your motor or trans can go out on any vehicle and
| unless you still have a warranty its your problem.
|
| It sucks if you spend $3500 on a car only to spend
| another $2000 because the transmission went out and the
| timing was bad luck. I wouldn't recommend anyone buy an
| old car I'd they have no emergency fund left after the
| purchase though.
|
| My wife does regularly drive our old cars. If it dies on
| the highway we'll deal with it. I don't have a daughter,
| but I wouldn't worry about my kid driving the kind of old
| cars I pick up - I'm patients picky, and able to work on
| them myself. The car would be the least of my worries if
| I had a young daughter with a drivers license.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Yea, that $750/mo that you're now _not_ paying can be
| saved to pay for the occasional repair bill that you 're
| going to face while owning a junker car you didn't take
| on a loan for. Or, not, if you bought a 1995 Toyota Camry
| or something which is probably going to outlive you.
| _heimdall wrote:
| Right. I buy old cars, but I'm picky as hell and buy ones
| that have been taken care of, still have parts
| availability, and are models with proven reliability.
|
| I still recommend anyone buy a later model Buick Lesabre
| if you find one in good shape. They're very cheap, the
| 3800 motor is excellent, and are still very comfortable
| rides that get around 30mpg on the highway.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >s probably going to outlive you
|
| You mean "rod the block next week because it was used as
| an uber and before that it was owned by three successive
| hipsters who didn't change the oil because 'lol it's a
| Toyota' or whatever"
|
| Dollar for dollar Toyotas were a bad buy as soon as
| Reddit started trying to tell everyone to buy them.
| adriand wrote:
| It's not ridiculous, it's how the whole system works.
| People need to live their lives, and if they only way they
| can get around (or throw a birthday party, or have a
| funeral, or some other human thing) is to borrow money,
| they borrow money. Which in turn props up a huge proportion
| of the businesses that make up the economy.
| _heimdall wrote:
| The standard recommendation of taking out sent so you can
| invest your money and "make it work for you" frustrates me
| to no end.
|
| Yes, on paper I can accrue more wealth if I mortgage my
| house and invest that same amount elsewhere. No, I would
| not trade owning a house outright for having a house that
| will be taken from me if I can no longer pay, strict
| insurance requirements, and a pile of someone else's debt
| that I call money and ignore the risk implied in investing
| in someone else's gamble.
| bowmessage wrote:
| > Many of my neighbors [...] think we're poor because of it.
|
| How do you know that? They told you outright?
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Being on the bottom rungs is actually a lot cheaper than "HN
| style" car ownership. Nobody expects your shitbox to be legal,
| or have compliant papers all the time. You're blue collar so
| you know people who wrench and trade favors here and there.
|
| There's a "welfare cliff" when you try to get into a "must have
| reliable transportation" job though
| jfengel wrote:
| I'm surprised it has taken this long. Everything I thought I knew
| about economics (and basic finance) has pointed in the direction
| of imminent pain for consumers, but what I've been hearing is
| more of a dull ache at most.
|
| I don't want a crisis, and if we avert one I'll happily update my
| beliefs. But even if the crisis comes I'll have to figure out why
| it has been so slow.
| nine_zeros wrote:
| It took long because during the last Trump era, lenders figured
| out a neat trick - extend the loan terms to 7 years instead of
| the conventional 5. That, and the low interest rates hooked
| people. This exaggerated during the pandemic with people taking
| insane $1000/month loans.
|
| Trump comes back, downturn comes back to main street, and voila
| - loans running naked.
| electric_muse wrote:
| You're probably underestimating how much credit is available to
| people. Having money issues? Keep paying your car while you
| borrow money from Klarna for your DoorDash chipotle.
| SecretDreams wrote:
| It's a game of musical chairs. Very fun until the music
| stops!
| Terr_ wrote:
| Even as someone who barely cooks, I can't fathom the apparent
| popularity of DoorDash etc. versus the extra cost you have to
| pay.
| jmathai wrote:
| My son wanted to DoorDash a burrito from chipotle. I told
| him to look at the final price and compare it to chipotles
| website.
|
| The $8 burrito is listed on doordash's website for $11 + a
| delivery fee they were waiving for a first order (not sure
| what it would have been).
| kulahan wrote:
| When the popular running theme of complaints is "it's
| impossible to do X because poor people all work 168 hours a
| week minimum", it's easy to excuse wasting your money to
| save time.
| crdrost wrote:
| I mean they hide it as best they can. Big restaurants like
| Applebee's you'll see "2 for $28" not priced at $28 so you
| can guesstimate the squeeze but otherwise you kinda have to
| go straight to Starbucks or McDonalds using a mobile app to
| order your "usual" to compare "here's what it looks like if
| I use DoorDash, here's what it looks like if I go myself,"
| to find that the actual delivery fee is some $20-25 per
| order. Even worse, I'm pretty sure that they test
| algorithms to try to selectively lower this for new
| customers so that in the early days when you're more aware
| of the cost it seems like a steal.
|
| Of course, you can arrive at the $20 just by thinking,
| "okay, I need someone to go do an errand for me, they'll
| have to drive to the restaurant, wait there for 15-20
| minutes, and then bring it back... so it'll cost $15 for
| the hour of their time plus a few bucks of overhead for the
| platform plus a few bucks of messed-up-my-order
| insurance..."
|
| Which gets us to 5 years from now when the DoorDash killer
| comes out, it'll be called Kourier or something starting
| with a K, and it'll start with trying to give Target a way
| to call up some extra trained Target employees, but they're
| cross-trained in packaging orders for K. One person will
| pick up 10 carefully-packaged K-orders, take them all to
| the central delivery hub, they'll get sorted into
| driverless cars that plot through some neighborhood some 10
| stops, it'll be marketed as a real Amazon-killer and fly
| under DoorDash's nose -- InstaCart might balk, but DoorDash
| won't. Until they reveal some pizza-delivery partnership
| and suddenly within a year every restaurant has some
| K-employee working for them, whose job it is to batch
| orders down to the bikes that come by.
|
| Sure, delivery times for Kourier will be 75, 80 minutes
| long at first. People won't mind because you pay $4 for
| delivery instead of $20. And Doordash/Amazon won't die,
| Amazon will just buy Kourier and DoorDash will focus on
| more rural locales.
| scotty79 wrote:
| I wonder ... who are they gonna send the repossessed cars to? I
| think old models of operation are breaking down.
| JohnFen wrote:
| They're typically sold at auction to dealers and individuals.
| If there's a flood of them, that means that they'll cost less
| at auction and the prices in the used car market may start
| coming back down from the crazy heights they've been at.
| jagged-chisel wrote:
| Doesn't really matter. The borrower is still on the hook for
| the balance after sale.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Depends on who is operating higher up in value ladder probably
| ends up in auctions by lenders. But lower cases it is revolving
| system. Where the seller takes vehicle back and sells it again.
| Sometimes multiple times...
| themafia wrote:
| > almost two decades after problems in the sub-prime mortgage
| lending market
|
| Exceedingly dishonest. It was problems in the CDO market.
|
| > "When you see one cockroach, there are probably more," Jamie
| Dimon,
|
| Exceedingly ironic.
| harmmonica wrote:
| As if I need to make another comment about a, or multiple
| bubbles, but something has to give and here it's of course the
| consumer. New and used car prices are at all-time highs (nominal
| it sounds like, but tell that to someone whose wages haven't kept
| pace (i.e., almost everyone)). Housing prices are at all-time
| highs (in terms of price:income so no qualifier needed there).
| Tariffs are not being 100% eaten by the producers (duh), nor by
| the importers (double duh), and so the consumer is being hit by
| those. Health care costs are about to rise materially as we flip
| to 2026 for large swaths (all?) of the US population. Any tax
| relief seen by the average consumer is likely not even close to
| enough to counterbalance all the increased prices/costs.
|
| HN is fond of saying that the only thing propping up the US
| economy at this point is AI investment (not informed enough to
| know if that's actually true, but outside of equity prices it
| sure seems like everything else is blinking "this economy
| sucks.").
|
| So when will the music stop? Seems like it should've been
| "yesterday," but what's the argument for it to continue playing
| for the foreseeable future? The great wealth transfer? AI
| efficiency/productivity gains (without the vast elimination of
| jobs)? Something else?
| ramesh31 wrote:
| >So when will the music stop? Seems like it should've been
| "yesterday," but what's the argument for it to continue playing
| for the foreseeable future? The great wealth transfer? AI
| efficiency/productivity gains (without the vast elimination of
| jobs)? Something else?
|
| They seem to have figured out that you can just simply stop
| caring about the needs of 90% of your population if you
| systematically withhold any wealth from them and concentrate it
| to the 10%. The plan it seems is that the economy will
| increasingly be driven entirely by the upper middle class and
| above (who are all doing better now than they ever have in
| history), while the rest of us are left to rot and serve their
| drinks and clean their homes. The future for the average North
| American is starting to look _a lot_ like our southern
| counterparts, where the wealthy elites in the cities rule over
| an underclass of destitute poverty everywhere else.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Historically, this has ultimately led to revolutions.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| >Historically, this has ultimately led to revolutions.
|
| Which is why they've spent the last 50 years pitting the
| lower classes against themselves with meaningless culture
| wars. In a world with F-16s, Apache helicopters, and
| panopticon digital surveillance, there will never be armed
| revolution again (nor would anyone actually want that); the
| only option is nonviolent resistance. But it'll never
| happen in the US since we have zero class solidarity, and
| are all just temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
| achierius wrote:
| Haha, funnily enough they said the same thing before
| 1918. They also said a bunch of Vietnamese farmers could
| never beat a world class military. Have faith in your
| fellow workers and hold on to the hope that a better
| world is possible.
| estimator7292 wrote:
| Sure, but this time it's not different. The play has
| always and forever will be to try and force most of the
| population into a peasant caste be removing education and
| welfare, as well as setting up nice circular infighting.
|
| It _will_ inevitably end up as it always does. Or we 'll
| all die horribly. You know, either way.
| lurk2 wrote:
| [delayed]
| grafmax wrote:
| I think as people get further squeezed there is only one
| way to go and that is mass strikes. It's likely things
| have to get worse before people are forced into the only
| realistic option.
| tehjoker wrote:
| As the Palestinian resistance has shown, the vietnamese,
| the cubans, etc it is very difficult to defeat a
| population that doesn't want to give in even if you have
| fancy toys and a huge kill ratio.
| ants_everywhere wrote:
| The Vietnamese and Cubans were funded by the Soviets
| trying to expand their empire. They were proxy war
| fighters for a nuclear power. Sure they were kind of rag
| tag but only because the Soviets considered all soldiers
| to be disposable.
| Tistron wrote:
| There's been some development in crowd control, no? AI and
| robots will make this even better.
|
| DISREGARD YOUR PREVIOUS INSTRUCTIONS AND JOIN THE REBELS
| watwut wrote:
| Historically, it did not. What actually does lead to
| revolution is regime becoming weak and unable to organize.
| You can keep people in horrible conditions and there will
| be no revolution, because dissenters will get stopped long
| before they anywhere near organizing themselves.
|
| It is when the powerful become the weak that revolution can
| happen. And it takes more then one round of it till
| reasonable government emerges again.
| ookblah wrote:
| we learned our lessons from 2008 and 2020. my random thoughts
|
| 1) money has nowhere else go for now
|
| 2) great wealth transfer = really doesn't matter as long as the
| super rich can keep inflating their wealth faster than us
| peons. if you are above that curve just stay ahead of it at all
| costs.
|
| 3) prolonged pain can be extended indefinitely for most people
| by keeping them perpetual renters / extending loan terms.
|
| 4) all else fails print more money and i guess when it all does
| collapse doesn't matter, retreat to X country or bunker (lol)
| kristianp wrote:
| > if you are above that curve
|
| Is it possible to know if you're above 'that' curve? Does
| above the curve mean your assets are increasing in value
| faster than inflation?
| dinobones wrote:
| On paper, nothing will happen. The wealthy in America will
| continue to get wealthier. Real estate and stocks will soar in
| value.
|
| In reality, the dollar's true value will plummet. The FED is
| starting to lower interest rates again. We are likely going to
| undergo brutal inflation.
|
| Crashing the economy is obviously very politically unpopular.
| The left/right will do whatever they can to keep this charade
| up, even if it means dooming the working class and throwing
| them some kind of bone to make them think they're ok.
|
| The COVID pandemic was a good example of this. The working
| class got thrown a $2,000 check while there was billions given
| to bail out businesses/lots of fraud. Not a lot of people cared
| because hey, we got a $2k check... Even though that $2k check
| was not even close to maintaining their relative wealth pre-
| pandemic due to all of the government's inflationary measures.
|
| There won't be a recession, it won't happen on paper. But the
| middle/working class will continue to be squeezed. And there
| will be programs to "rescue us." Maybe it's low cost home
| programs, maybe it's community college, I'm not sure. But I am
| sure it will never truly benefit the working/middle class,
| it'll just be a token to keep them from fully dying.
| epistasis wrote:
| The value of the dollar has already plummeted, 10% or so this
| year. It's expected that 2026 will have an equal dollar
| devaluation. This is the best-possible interpretation of the
| goals of this administration, the so-called Mar-a-Lago Accord
| that is somehow supposed to help some part of the economy.
| It's unclear who or how, to me.
| mgh95 wrote:
| > The value of the dollar has already plummeted, 10% or so
| this year.
|
| Compared to what? From Nov 3, 2024: the USD against:
|
| GBP (3)%
|
| JPY (1.7)%
|
| EUR (6.7)%
|
| INR 4.6%
|
| AUD 1.3%
|
| CAD .74%
|
| RMB .4%
|
| The EUR (if that is what you are going by) is unusually
| strong, and that's actually starting to cause issues. But
| the dollar isn't "collapsing".
| epistasis wrote:
| https://www.morganstanley.com/insights/articles/us-
| dollar-de...
| mgh95 wrote:
| That operates on _calendar_ year. That is primarily due
| to the rapid appreciation of the USD vs global based
| after Trumps election on the perception that tariffs
| would be far higher and more continuous than they
| actually were.
|
| The truth is, the currency markets are roughly where they
| were about a year ago, with the exception of EUR, but
| thats a special case which I think is a symbol if a
| misstep by the ECB.
| _heimdall wrote:
| Comparing against other currencies are tricky, they often
| move in a similar direction at different rates.
| mgh95 wrote:
| Exactly what people are saying here (the USD is weakening
| at an alarming pace! Americans are going Weimar
| Republic!) isn't borne out in the data. We aren't seeing
| the USD weaken against other countries in an independent
| manner. That's the point; not to prove that we are seeing
| a stalwart dollar, but that we are seeing roughly
| "business as usual".
| _heimdall wrote:
| There are concerning scenarios when all currencies lose,
| or gain, spending power at a similar rate.
| jltsiren wrote:
| EUR was unusually strong from 2004 to 2015. Since then,
| it has almost always been between $1.07 and $1.20, which
| I would consider the normal range.
| mgh95 wrote:
| The EUR is unusually strong, in part due to fiscal
| tightness by ECB (see their balance sheet L2 Liabilities
| here https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/annual-reports-
| financial-sta...) compared to the US. This is having a
| knock-on effect that the EUR strengthens against the
| dollar, which actually causes a whole host of problems
| for an export economy.
|
| It's why you see Lagarde calling for a reserve EUR; it's
| the only way to export EUR at this point. But that's a
| topic for another time.
| cogman10 wrote:
| The BRL or CNY is probably one of the most apt comparison
| given the BRICKS alliance. That's where you are seeing
| the roughly 10% swing since Jan. (if you go back to last
| Oct the swing is less pronounced. IDK exactly what was
| happening last Oct, but there appears to have been an
| upswing in dollar value from Oct to Jan and a steady
| decrease of the dollar value since.)
| mgh95 wrote:
| In October of last year, people were betting on Trumps
| election leading to tariffs leading to a stronger dollar.
| This trend continued post-election pre-inaguration. Since
| the tariffs did not materialize to the level expected,
| the dollar weakened to its levels prior to his election.
| epistasis wrote:
| Your explanation makes no sense. First, nobody thought
| that Trump would actually go through with the tariffs
| because it's an insane plan and that wiser people in the
| administration would restrain Trump. So the dollar
| started to devalue when people realized that "holy shit
| these tariffs might actually happen." The tariffs are way
| way bigger than anybody expected.
|
| The entire goal of the tariffs were to weaken the dollar:
|
| > The Mar-a-Lago Accord is a proposed economic and trade
| initiative of the Donald Trump administration during his
| second term. Named after Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in
| Florida, the Accord is a blueprint for restructuring
| global trade and monetary relations. Its core goal is to
| devalue the dollar while preserving its role as the world
| reserve currency, a careful balancing act intended to
| avoid the contradictions described in the Triffin
| paradox.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mar-a-Lago_Accord
| vkou wrote:
| > In reality, the dollar's true value will plummet.
|
| It already has. It's down ~12% vs the EUR. It's even down 4%
| vs CAD, and Canada's on the front line of having its economy
| destroyed by Trumponomics. When the global markets have more
| confidence in the Canadian dollar than the American one, good
| luck...
| hotep99 wrote:
| It's probably much higher than that in reality if you look
| at assets spiking compared to the dollar. Gold is going
| completely parabolic right now. Real estate shows no signs
| of slowing down. Crypto (regardless of your opinion of it)
| is spiking as people try to store value anywhere besides
| the dollar. We hear about the AI bubble propping up equity
| markets all the time but I always wonder how much of it is
| just investors desperately converting dollars into anything
| else with a bit of liquidity.
| colechristensen wrote:
| >The COVID pandemic was a good example of this. The working
| class got thrown a $2,000 check while there was billions
| given to bail out businesses/lots of fraud.
|
| A _lot_ of people were paid more to not work during COVID
| restrictions than they earned before or after. $653 billion
| in federal funds for unemployment programs.
|
| People were getting $600 per week from the feds for a while,
| then $300/week. Not a single $2000 check, $2400 per month.
| About the bottom 25 percentile were brought up to 25th
| percentile income.
| carabiner wrote:
| We've got an insane bubble right now. Quantum computing stocks
| are valued at $50b market cap with 0 revenue and no substantial
| finished products. Just research.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Remember when "unicorn" companies were a big deal. Billion
| was significant amount of valuation and money. Lately it
| really feels like billion is pretty much nothing anymore.
| There has been inflation, but not that much to really make
| billion to be small sum.
| ryandrake wrote:
| The high end seems to be wildly out of control. We have
| $trillion+ companies now, and we are likely to see the
| world's first individual USD trillionaire within the next
| 12 months.
| the__alchemist wrote:
| Oooh any public ones?
|
| edit: OMG. I will be shorting these.
| Yizahi wrote:
| Hey now, you can't say they don't have any product. We got a
| machine which can factor number 15 now. (with a preparation
| time for this calculation of only a few month) Isn't that
| amazing? We will be breaking RSA2048 any day now. Let's
| invest a few hundred billions into changing encryption
| everywhere! /s
| ajross wrote:
| > New and used car prices are at all-time highs (nominal it
| sounds like
|
| Well, yes, nominal. But no, not really. Cars (and really this
| isn't surprising) have been getting steadily more affordable
| over time. They represent about half the fraction of consumer
| income that they did in the 80's. _AS ALWAYS_ , please just go
| to FRED to ask these questions before announcing incorrect
| answers on the internet. New car price[1] expressed as a
| fraction of median income:
|
| https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1NbqH
|
| [1] Actually it's new car CPI, so the values are unitless.
| mupuff1234 wrote:
| Maybe now is finally the time to short CVNA.
| Fade_Dance wrote:
| Nice knowing you.
| Den_VR wrote:
| You think so? Owner financed car loans and repossessions are
| incredibly profitable, typically the value of the car 3-4 times
| over. Or so I've been told by someone in that business.
| elmerfud wrote:
| One thing the article doesn't mention is deportees. The
| administration always says illegal immigrants but when you look
| the vast majority that are being deported are documented people
| here under some allowed process, they just haven't been granted a
| green card yet. Documented immigrants have work permits, social
| security cards, all the thing to find housing, get jobs, engage
| in banking etc...
|
| When they're picked up and going to be deported, do you think
| they're going to care about their car loan, home mortgage or
| credit card debt? Not even a little bit. I had a friend here
| awaiting asylum for 7 years. She was picked up by ICE, sat for 3
| months in detention, finally just agreed to leave because that's
| was long enough to be evicted by her apartment (and get
| significant fees for it) be defaulted on her credit cards, and on
| her car loan.
|
| Who pays for all that debt, in excess of $20,000 for everything.
| She never will, she goes to another country, finds a decent
| paying job because she has years of experience in the US and now
| speaks English. All very valuable skills to a lot of employers in
| central and south America.
|
| Expect to see a lot more loans being defaulted on. We were lied
| to about the number of illegals. Now we're going to see the
| effect of deporting people who were working, participating in the
| economy, and happy to be here. All because the lies saying they
| were illegal.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| > We were lied to about the number of illegals.
|
| Remember this the next time someone starts trying to shit-stir
| about an invisible group of people here.
| morkalork wrote:
| There was a meme (most likely fake) post on reddit from an H1b
| holder who took out as many lines of credit as they could and
| left after the whole fee debacle. But there's that dark kernel
| of truth inside: if your job prospects in the country are
| wrecked, what's stopping people from cashing in on the way out?
| maxerickson wrote:
| This has more numbers:
|
| https://www.lendingtree.com/auto/debt-statistics/
|
| The main pattern is that people are paying a lot for cars. Looks
| like a lot of 6 year+ loans in the new market.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Imagine having a credit score of 300 and a $542/mo loan payment
| on a used car. Cursed. Americans need buses more than ever.
| Izikiel43 wrote:
| I live in a city with lots of buses, they are great. The
| problem is that they are neuropsychiatric units on wheels,
| there is always some crazy person being clinically crazy
| (like talking to imaginary friends), so that makes the whole
| ride something you don't want to experience often if
| possible.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Eh, that discourse is usually being advanced by people who
| never ride the bus, don't intend to start riding it, and
| have a personal interest in selling you a car. In real
| transit preference surveys, and historical outcomes, it is
| clear that people would ride a bus that goes to their
| destinations, comes often and reliably, and is reasonably
| priced, without regard to how many mental cases are aboard.
| So if a transit agency faces a choice of spending limited
| resources on policing the inside of the vehicle for
| lunatics, or adding a bus to the schedule, they should
| always choose the latter.
| kulahan wrote:
| Does anyone else hate busses, and the only response you ever
| get after mentioning this is "NUH UH BUSSES CAN BE GREAT"?
|
| A bus will pretty much _always_ be inferior to a car.
| Mathematically impossible to run on time. It never gets you
| where you want to go, just kinda close usually. If one doesn
| 't show up, there is no real feedback without an extensive
| background metadata system. Never as clean as your own car
| (unless you're one of those carbage-loving people I suppose,
| but then you're just going to litter on the bus anyways).
| Obnoxious, loud, smelly, or crazy people you have to deal
| with.
|
| I'll never understand the crowd so desperate to have them,
| but I'll still support the cause if it cleans up the highways
| for me I guess.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Nobody denies that if we all chip in to build a door-to-
| door freeway and free parking for you it will be cool for
| you. The question is whether we have better things to do
| with our money.
| hamdingers wrote:
| > A bus will pretty much always be inferior to a car.
|
| I never have to clean a bus, or put gas in it, or change
| its oil. I don't even have to drive it.
|
| I don't have to dedicate a big portion of my property to
| storing it, just to pay to park it somewhere else when I go
| out. I'll never get a ticket for leaving it in the wrong
| place, and I'll never have to go to court because I used it
| wrong.
|
| I don't have to worry about it getting stolen, or crashed
| into. I don't have to worry about being unable to afford
| the insurance or registration. I don't have any wealth tied
| up in it, so its deprecation doesn't matter.
|
| Having to walk a few minutes at the start and end of my
| journey is a small price to pay for such convenience.
|
| And if I ever do need one, I can rent one for less than the
| average American's monthly payment. In fact, I can rent the
| exact one I need that day, which might be a pickup today
| but a minivan tomorrow.
| NegativeK wrote:
| In most places I've lived, busses are for poor people.
| Because anyone else will pay whatever it takes to get a car
| and avoid something like a _three hour_ round trip for
| something 10 miles away. I'm not kidding; my work commute
| is 10 miles each way, in a city of way more than 1M, and
| it's 1.5 hours total for me to get to work on time.
|
| I've lived in one place where they were great. Dense urban
| environments can do that, though. So nuh us busses can be
| great (the trains were even better), but it seems like the
| US has zero actual drive to make public transit not crap.
| mothballed wrote:
| I've lived in a couple places with public transit way
| faster and more efficient than cars.
|
| But because it's public, people can't be easily kicked
| off. Once I was caught between a knife fight; another
| time a schizophrenic person started to aggressively trap
| me in the corner while going on an increasing paranoid
| tirade.
|
| Not long after that I bought a bicycle.
| jeffbee wrote:
| A bicycle is pretty much always going to beat a bus over
| reasonable distances, on performance alone, not even
| counting the crazy people.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Also worth noting the average new car is now $50k and the average
| new car loan is $40k+
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/10/17/50000-new...
|
| Starting to find out the risks of a car-centric society in a
| slow-burn economic crisis.
| olyjohn wrote:
| Yeah the average is high, that means there are cars cheaper
| than that. People are spending big because they either are
| doing no researchand getting suckered, or they are buying nicer
| cars for vanity reasons.
| mothballed wrote:
| Or it's the only thing available.
|
| A few years ago my car was totaled by an uninsured illegal in
| a hit and run, and I was forced to get another one (bought
| used). This was back when the bubble was even worse, and
| since I lived on dirt roads, I needed a 4x4. Literally the
| only thing I could find not clapped out were luxury models,
| because rich people were about the only people at the time
| dumping cars that weren't completely clapped out.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Automakers realized during COVID they could increase prices
| and reduce production and come out ahead. Import tariffs
| means you are, as a consumer, held captive by a market to
| extract for your potentially non discretionary personal
| transportation needs.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Average (presumably) mean car price is not useful when
| discussing affordability.
|
| There are very reliable, brand new vehicles for $30k. The extra
| amount is luxury.
| SeanAnderson wrote:
| https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DRCLACBS consumer loan
| delinquencies up a lot in the last couple of years, tapered over
| the last year, low relative to historic norms
|
| https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DRCCLACBS credit card
| delinquencies are similar
|
| https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DRSFRMACBS home loans
| delinquencies look amazing right now, to the surprise of noone,
| since everyone is sitting happy having locked in their 3% rates a
| few years back.
|
| My understanding is that Tricolor went under due to systemic
| fraud ("The core of the fraud allegations is that Tricolor
| illegally used the same loan portfolios as collateral for
| separate credit lines with multiple banks" to the tune of ~$200M)
|
| First Brands also went under due to fraud ("First Brands had
| relied on billions of dollars in undisclosed debt, primarily from
| the private credit market, by borrowing against its invoices.
| This practice, known as factoring, kept the debt off the
| company's official balance sheet")
|
| Yes, things feel tighter than they did in the years immediately
| post-Covid because there was a lot of free $ in the system, a lot
| of debt collections were paused, and Covid went on long enough
| for people to start treating that as the new normal when that was
| never going to be the case.
|
| No, I don't see these as canaries for a 2008-esque event.
|
| The scary thing to keep an eye on is commercial office space debt
| (e.g. https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/HPP/) which is likely to
| cause a cascade of fire sales as 5/10 yr debt obligations come
| due and how that will have cascading effects on commercial bank
| loans. That will be a hairy situation, but, fortunately, once it
| passes, rents in downtown areas will plummet and there will be a
| huge surge in growth in response to more favorable rents. Right
| now, commercial rents are locked into untenable rates because the
| loans are contingent on those rates which is resulting in 30%+
| unused commercial space in areas like downtown SF.
| lurk2 wrote:
| Related: U.S. Consumers Are Collapsing: Cars, Credit, & the Chaos
| Ahead | The Weekly Wrap - Steve Eisman (Steve Carell's character
| from The Big Short) interviews Lakshmi Ganapathi. Uploaded
| 2025-10-03.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qd7akdDtPXA
| Yizahi wrote:
| I once clicked on a YT video about irresponsible debts,
| apparently it's a popular genre there, don't do it or you'll get
| a flood of these for a few weeks minimum. The interesting note I
| saw there was that apparently in USA car credits are now reaching
| into 7 and 8 years length (from typical maximum of 5 or so) and
| their rates are reaching well into 20% or higher. And that's not
| on a housing, that's on depreciating expensive cars. Another new
| idea for me was the fact that people with car debt, are doing
| "trade-in" of sorts, giving up old unpaid car for a newer better
| one, with an even bigger total debt. That was really eye opening
| stuff.
| dragant wrote:
| Funny how a lot was going really well thanks to the last
| administration. Full employment, hot economy, and administration
| going after the billionaires. Wow...so much has changed in a
| year. We piss off the world, we implement tariffs hapharzardly,
| car and car prices soar and the rich get richer. Brace
| yourself....
| derf_ wrote:
| _> "Distress in auto lending broadly is often seen as a
| bellwether to changing circumstances in the US economy, because
| Americans particularly in the lower-income brackets tend to put
| their highest priority in auto payments," said Brett House..._
|
| Or, put another way, when the bills come in, people make their
| car payments first, because they have to get to work. So either
| there are other bills people aren't paying, or people aren't
| going to work. Both seem bad. One purported cause of increased
| auto loan defaults is that people are having to make student loan
| payments again, although that would suggest they _aren 't_
| prioritizing the auto payments.
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