Household Net Worth Up $1.1 Trillion To $54.6 Trillion
Household net worth rose by $1.1 billion in the first quarter to $54.4 trillion according to The Federal Reserve, driven to some extend by rising stock prices and a desire by consumers to pay down debt.The Fed also reported that:…
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Household debt contracted at an annual rate of
2½ percent in the first quarter, the seventh consecutive
quarter of decline. Home mortgage debt fell at an
annual rate of 3¾ percent, a significantly faster decline
than in the fourth quarter, while consumer credit
contracted at an annual rate of 1½ percent.
The fear among consumers that high debt levels could push them beyond the limits of their incomes and falling housing prices probably caused more Americans to aggressively pay down mortgages.
Federal borrowing continued to move up rapidly.
State and local government debt expanded at
an annual rate of 4¼ percent in the first quarter, about
the same pace as in the previous quarter. Federal
government debt increased at an annual rate of 18½
percent in the first quarter, significantly faster than in
the previous quarter, but below the pace seen in 2009 as
a whole.
The data will further fuel concern that governments at all levels are overextended and austerity measures and higher taxes are the only remedy.
Douglas A. McIntyre
Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.
Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.
McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.
His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.
A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.
TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.
McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.
