4 ms·

I'm guessing it's the latter. I owe hundreds of thousands on my house, but my house is worth significantly more than my debt, so my net debt is zero. I'm guess

I'm guessing it's the latter. I owe hundreds of thousands on my house, but my house is worth significantly more than my debt, so my net debt is zero. I'm guessing this is just all debts added together, and then divided by the number of people. And it's probably including national debt, which is ~$58k/person in the US (which is surprisingly slightly below average for countries with debt).

nonbel 8y ago
>"I owe hundreds of thousands on my house [...] my net debt is zero." >"my house is worth significantly more than my debt" You realize the value of your house dropping by 50% in a year would not be very surprising? And that would be mild, it is all up to which group of people the federal reserve chooses to benefit.
- heartbreak 8y ago
  At the end of the day it's still a house.
  - nonbel 8y ago
    What does that have to do with owing a bank 300k and then your assets are worth ~150k?
    - cinquemb 8y ago
      I made the joke (about what is considered a depreciating asset or not) on an S&P e-mini forum a couple of days ago that went something this: Most people don't buy houses, they buy mortgages worth $x00,000 on an "asset" that goes to being valued at $x00,000 / 2 when interests rates double…
- posix_me_less 8y ago
  > value of your house dropping by 50% in a year would not be very surprising? That's crazy, does that happen often in the U.S.?
  - nonbel 8y ago
    Not often. Actually there is an interesting distinction here between frequency and probability... but anyway there has recently been a ZIRP induced bubble (~2008-2016), which leads to high prices of various assets in a trickle down way: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FEDFUNDS https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FEDFUNDS