Americans lust for things they cannot afford continues as credit usage has rebounded since the height of the credit crisis however, with the Fed's current zero interest rate policy (ZIRP), the ongoing use of credit is not necessarily a thing for concern.
After all, if you were able to refinance your home from 6% down to 3%, that's a good thing, right? Ditto for your credit cards which may have been 9.9% prior to 2008 and now down at much lower levels. Indeed ZIRP has aided corporations and individuals to grab historic, once-in-a-lifetime opportunities to restructure existing debt and issue new debt for acquisitions for almost nothing.
In that respect, I guess Obama's statement "we're much better off than we were" would ring true here.
What does bother me, however, is the enormous recovery and usage of subprime lending. Those loans for many autos, payday loans, title loans and credit cards for those with less than a pristine credit FICO score.
While working in mortgage banking, w
