The "Pooring of America"

A graphical illustration of America's de-leveraging (I am talking about consumers not banks). You remember the American consumer....right?

Hat tip to Calculated Risk for this stunning visual.

Notice how slow debt is decreasing, whereas value is plummeting. Kinda reminds me of going to Vegas, it's really hard to earn/win your money but it's really easy to lose it. The problem here is that you can't walk away from the "debt table" like you can the blackjack table.

Stung by the loss of more than $2.8 trillion in their net wealth, the nation's households paid down their debts in the third quarter for the first time since at least 1952, the Federal Reserve reported Thursday.

As of Sept. 30, households' total outstanding debt shrank at an annualized rate of 0.8% from $13.94 trillion to $13.91 trillion, the Fed said in its quarterly flow of funds report. It's the first decline in household debt ever recorded in the report.
...
With the stock market plunging and home prices falling rapidly, American households lost a total of $2.81 trillion in wealth during the third quarter, the most ever. Wealth fell at an 18% annual rate during the quarter.