Word: debt
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...applicants have all contributed to the money shortage, putting massive pressure on the nation's credit resources in the race to translate higher-than-ever paychecks and profits into higher-than-ever living standards and productive capacity. To fuel the boom, the nation has run $770 billion in debt, a 65% increase since 1946 (see chart). While public debt has dwindled from 65% of the total to 45% in ten years, loans to individuals (including small businesses and farmers) have rocketed from $60 billion to $191 billion...
Corporate debt, including bonds and loans of all types, now totals $232 billion, up 40% in five years. Mortgage debt, which had been climbing steadily by $10 billion a year since 1949, spurted ahead $16.2 billion in 1955; despite the decline in homebuilding, mortgages on nonfarm, one-to-four-family housing reached a $94.2 billion peak in June, are still mounting at an estimated annual rate of $12 billion...
Raising the Standards. The sharpest increase has been in short-term consumer credit. As disposable income quadrupled since 1939, consumers raised their debt accordingly (from $7.2 billion to $37.1 billion), now owe an average 13% of take-home pay. With the addition of housing debt, the consumers' total unpaid balance in mid-1956 represented $800 for every man. woman and child in the U.S., v. $180 in 1939. From go-now, pay-later trips abroad to fill-your-teeth-on-time plans, installment buying now covers almost every contingency from womb to tomb...
...increase reflects a basic shift in the American outlook. Even churches, traditionally shy of debt, have taken advantage of easy credit and heavy collection plates. Shucking off the social stigma that once was associated with debt, most U.S. consumers have also shed their economic qualms about pledging future earnings to enrich the present...
...year-old Chicago mail clerk who, with his wife, Frances, is paying off $152.90 in installment loans plus $97.50 in rent a month on total monthly take-home pay of $658, says he learned his lesson as a G.I. in inflation-crippled China. Ogens' slogan: "Get in debt on the high dollar, pay off in the low dollar." Says he: "Then there's the $200-or 300-a-year income-tax deduction you can take for interest payments. If we don't need anything after we get out of debt, we'll go out and invent...