"Corker estimated that, if polled, only 6% of the people in this country would say they care about such fiscal issues."
The fact that so few people care about fiscal responsibility is a testament to the power of tax cuts and self-interest. The epitaph for the U.S. empire will read that it was a failed experiment in self-interest taken to its logical dead-end. And then on to level '11' under Forrest Trump.
Of course, outside of Fantasyland, there is no such thing as free money. So whereas most financial bloggers seem to always think that the day of reckoning is at some indeterminate point in the distance - the days of reckoning are already at hand. It's just that the pain so far has only been felt at the low end of the income scale and in Emerging Markets.
Here we see that speculators are bidding up reflationary assets which is feeding back through CPI into interest rates. Those who get paid the least are getting double monkey hammered by higher fuel costs, and higher debt costs.
This type of Idiocratic "trade" works, until it self-destructs; therefore those who don't get out ahead of time, don't get out.
The Fed updated their consumer delinquency data through the first quarter. Here we see that delinquencies for the year historically reach their low point in the first quarter and then peak in the fourth. Which implies that we've already seen the low point for delinquencies in 2018.
Delinquencies on all loans and leases to consumers (red)
Short-term rates (blue):
