• And The (Dead) Beat Goes On—Will Work At Home Help?
Posted by Tom Harnish on June 25th, 2008
For people who can and will work at home, that may be the last resort for many as gas prices continue to climb and the economy continues to dive.
Yesterday the Conference Board reported that consumer confidence had fallen to its lowest level since 1992, as high energy prices and a worsening job market begin changing attitudes toward discretionary spending.
There are also indicators that more people are falling behind on credit card payments, even as the number of mortgages in some stage of foreclosure reach record levels.
For example, in April, credit card performance fell in four of five measures according to Moody’s Credit Card Credit Indiceswho tracks over $445 billion of United States bank credit card loans. Worse, the charge-off rate, which measures credit-card account balances written off as uncollectable as an annualised percent of total loans outstanding, rose to 6.27 percent, up 31 percent from the rate a year earlier, which was 4.77 percent. The rise in April marks the sixteenth consecutive month of year-on-year increase and the seventh consecutive month of month-on-month increase, Moody’s said.
Moody’s said the April delinquency rate, which measures the proportion of account balances for which a monthly payment is more than 30 days late as a percent of total balances, rose to 4.50 percent from 3.70 percent a year earlier. They also reported that in April cardholders paid back, on average, 17.49 percent of their credit card debt, about 6.10 percent less than they did a year earlier when they paid back 18.63 percent.