AvlGuy

U.S. Household Debt: A Frightening Picture

User68127, there's good reasons to not give much credence to asset valuations. The dollar amount of the liabilities are fixed amount that are legally enforceable. Any change must be negotiated or handled via bankruptcy filings to be changed. The value of the assets behing those eliabilities are fluctuating freely, and mainly downward for the forseeable future. The cars are worth less daily, and the junk & crap bouight on credit cards or via HELOCs are not even 'e-bay-able' in liquidity. The houses behind the mortgages and HELOC purchases are losing value , but not as fast as the crap purchased via credit cards. 401ks, stocks, mutal funds are down ...and treading water.
But it gets better. While all the liabilities are fixed and unfluctuating, the assets, including homes & securities, would lose much of their $55 trillion valuation if the HHs all tried to liquidate them simultaneously.
That $55 trillion 'ephemeral, floating paper number' wouldnt net much when push came to shove.
Oddly this same Q&A came up twice in readers comments on an article in today's UK Telegraph.