The one that surprised me the most is at right (click to enlarge). I hadn't realized that the Federal government owned so much consumer debt. After a little research, I discovered this is primarily due Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae (both government-sponsored and government-backed institutions) capturing the dominant share of home mortgates – and home mortgages dominate consumer credit, of course.
In the last three years, federally-owned consumer credit has increased almost five times. What does this mean? It means that those (increasingly few) American citizens who, like me, actually pay taxes – it means we're on the hook to back almost five times more government-guaranteed debt. Lovely. What could possibly go wrong?
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