Delinquency Rates

I was just poking around FRED as I do when I can’t sleep and I discovered something which amazed me (I am often amazed by my ignorance). Non mortgage delinguency rates are low. In fact the delinquency rate on credit card loans of all commercial banks is the lowest on record (records only go back to 1991)

The blue curve shows delinquency rates on credit card loans by commercial banks. The red line shows the even lower (but not quite lowest ever) delinquency rate on business loans. If I put delinquency rates for single family home mortgages or all real estate secured loans, the graph would be hard to read as they dwarf the rates I graphed (and are at record highs).

Similarly the volume of total consumer loans of all commercial banks (“Total Consumer Credit Outstanding (TOTALSL), Monthly, End of Period, Seasonally Adjusted” again in blue) and of commercial and industrial loans ( “Commercial And Industrial Loans, All Commercial Banks (ACILACB), Quarterly, Not Seasonally Adjusted”, again in red) has recovered sharply after the recession.

The decline in commercial and industrial loans was only 1.5 times that of the 2001 recession, the series turned back up sooner and has been increasing more rapidly. There is no correction for inflation, these graphs are in millions of dollars (the legend is especially pointless because for some reason consumer loans are given in billions by default and I had to change the scale by hand).

The remaining financial market problem seems to me to be extremely concentrated in financing real estate transactions especially housing.