The Next Subprime Crisis Is Here: 12 Signs That A Day Of Reckoning Has Arrived For The U.S. Auto Industry
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/w...icons/user.gif By Michael Snyder, on April 3rd, 2017
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/w...in-460x345.jpgIn 2008, subprime mortgages almost single-handedly took down the entire financial system, and now a new subprime crisis is here. In recent years, the auto industry has been able to boost sales by aggressively pushing people into auto loans that they cannot afford. In particular, auto loans made to consumers with subprime credit have been accounting for an increasingly larger percentage of the market.
Unfortunately, when you make loans to people that should not be getting them, eventually a lot of those loans are going to start to go bad, and that is precisely what is happening now. Meanwhile, automakers and dealers are starting to panic as sales have begun to fall and used car prices have started to crash. If you work in the auto industry, you might remember how horrible the last recession was, and this new downturn could eventually turn out to be even worse. The following are 12 signs that a day of reckoning has arrived for the U.S. auto industry
#1 Seven out of the eight largest automakers in the United States fell short of their sales projections in March.
#2 Overall, U.S. auto sales so far in 2017 have been described as a disaster despite record spending on consumer incentives by automakers.
#3 Dealer inventories are now at the highest level that we have seen since the last financial crisis. Why this is so troubling is because there are a whole lot of unsold vehicles just sitting there doing nothing, and this is becoming a major financial problem for many dealers.
#4 It now takes an average of 74 days before a dealer is able to sell a new vehicle. This number is also the highest that it has been since the last financial crisis.
#5 Not only is Ford projecting that sales will fall this year, they are also projecting that sales will fall in 2018 as well.
#6 Used vehicle prices are already starting to decline dramatically
The used-vehicle price index from the National Automobile Dealers Association posted a 3.8% decline in February compared to the prior month. NADA also said wholesale prices fell 1.6%.
#7 As I discussed yesterday, Morgan Stanley is projecting that used car prices could crash by up to 50% over the next four or five years.
#8 Right now, more than a million Americans are behind on their payments on their auto loans. This is something that has not happened since the last financial crisis.
#9 In 2017, U.S. consumers are more underwater on their auto loans than they have ever been before.
#10 Subprime auto loan losses have soared to their highest level since the last financial crisis, and the delinquency rate on those loans has risen to the highest level that we have seen since the last financial crisis. By now, I am sure that you are starting to notice a pattern in these data points.
#11 At this moment, approximately $200,000,000,000 has been loaned out by auto lenders to consumers with subprime credit.
#12 Just like with subprime mortgages in the run up to the last financial crisis, subprime auto loans have been bundled together and sold as securities to investors. And just like last time around, this has turned out to be a recipe for disaster
Many auto loans, including those considered subprime, are securitized and sold to investors. But Morgan Stanley recently reported that the share of auto securities tied to deep subprime loans those given to borrowers with a FICO credit score below 550 has risen from 5.1 percent in 2010 to 32.5 percent today. It said defaults on those bonds have risen significantly in the past five years.
Almost a quarter of the more than $1.1 trillion in U.S. auto loan debt is owed by subprime borrowers, and delinquency rates have hit their highest point in seven years.
In the old days, you could always count on the U.S. auto industry to bounce back eventually because of the economic strength of average U.S. consumers.
Unfortunately, the middle class in America is being systematically hollowed out by long-term economic trends that our leaders in Washington D.C. have consistently ignored.
We have become a nation of economic extremes. There are more millionaires in this country than ever before, but meanwhile poverty is exploding in communities all over the country.
If you live in a prosperous area, things may be going great where you live for the moment. But as Gallup has discovered, an all-time record high percentage of Americans are worrying a great deal about hunger and homelessness these days
Over the past two years, an average of 67% of lower-income U.S. adults, up from 51% from 2010-2011, have worried a great deal about the problem of hunger and homelessness in the country. Concern has also increased among middle- and upper-income Americans, but they still worry far less than do lower-income Americans.
You may have plenty of money in your bank account, and so for you hunger and homelessness are not very big issues. But for those that are just scraping by from month to month, having enough food and a place to sleep at night are top priorities. Here is more from Gallup
Americans at all income levels are expressing greater concern about hunger and homelessness, and it is the top worry among lower-income Americans, who are most likely to struggle to pay for adequate food and housing.
In addition to the woes of the auto industry, the retail industry is going through the worst wave of store closings in modern American history, pension funds are melting down all over the nation, and stocks are primed for a crash of epic proportions. Things are lining up just right for the kind of scenario that I laid out in The Beginning Of The End, but unfortunately most people are not listening to the warnings.
The same thing happened just before the great financial crisis of 2008. All of the warning signs were there well in advance, and many of the experts were warning about what was coming as early as 2005. But because it did not happen immediately, a lot of people greatly mocked the warnings.
But then the fall of 2008 arrived and all of the mockers suddenly went silent.
As you can see from the numbers that I shared above, a new crisis has already arrived.
The only question now is how bad it will ultimately turn out to be.
As always, let us hope for the best, but let us also get prepared for the worst.
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April 3rd, 2017 | Tags: Auto Industry, Auto Lending, Auto Loan, Auto Loans, Bad Loans, Day Of Reckoning, Debt, Debts, Lending, Loan, Loans, Subprime Auto Loans, Subprime Crisis, U.S. Auto Industry | Category: The Economy, The Next Great Depression
What Is America Going To Look Like When Stocks, Home Prices And Even Used Cars All Crash By At Least
Comments from Benjaminis: This Folks is called REALITY and it moves markets when PERCEPTIONS are TRUMPED.... It always ends this way , always...
Have you ever thought about what comes after the bubble? In 2008 we got a short preview of what life will be like, but most Americans seem to have come to the conclusion that the last financial crisis was just a minor bump in the road toward endless economic prosperity. But of course the truth is that the ridiculously high debt-fueled standard of living that we are enjoying now is not sustainable, and after this bubble bursts it will be an extremely painful adjustment for our society.
Since the last financial crisis, the U.S. national debt has nearly doubled, corporate debt has doubled, stock valuations have reached exceedingly ridiculous extremes, the student loan debt bubble has surpassed a trillion dollars, we are facing the largest unfunded pension crisis in U.S. history, and in many parts of the country (particularly the west coast) we are facing a housing bubble that is even worse than the one that burst in 2007 and 2008.
And even with all of these bubbles, U.S. GDP growth has been absolutely anemic. Even if you believe the grossly manipulated numbers that the federal government puts out, the U.S. economy grew at a “miserably low” rate of just 1.6 percent in 2016…
In terms of GDP, the fourth quarter was revised up slightly, but there were adjustments for prior quarters, and overall GDP growth for the year 2016 remained at a miserably low 1.6%. We’ve come to call this the “stall speed.” It’s difficult for the US economy to stay aloft at this slow speed. As Q4 gutted any hopes for a strong finish, GDP growth in 2016 matched the worst year since the Great Recession.
And corporate profits, despite a stock market that has been surging for years, are even worse. A lot worse. They’ve declined for years. In fact, they declined for years during the prior two stock market bubbles, the dotcom bubble and the pre-Financial-Crisis bubble. Both ended in crashes.
Things have continued to get even worse early in 2016. At this point, it is being projected that U.S. GDP will grow at an annual rate of just 0.9 percent during the first quarter of 2017.
So anyone that tries to tell you that the U.S. economy is in good shape is simply not being honest with you.
But even though things don’t look great now, they are going to look far, far worse after the biggest debt bubble in human history bursts.
For example, what do you think that America will look like after half of all stock market wealth disappears? In a recent note to his clients, John P. Hussman stated that his team is projecting that by the end of this current market cycle “roughly half of U.S. equity market capitalization – $17 trillion in paper wealth – will simply vanish”.
And of course that projection lines up perfectly with what I have been saying for quite a while. In order for key measures of stock market valuation (such as CAPE, etc.) to return to their long-term averages, stocks are going to have to fall at least 40 to 50 percent from their current levels.
As this coming crisis unfolds, other asset classes will experience astounding downturns as well. This week, Morgan Stanley (one of the too big to fail banks) released a report that said that used car prices “could crash by up to 50%” over the next several years…
For months we’ve been talking about the massive lending bubble propping up the U.S. auto market. Now, noting many of the same concerns that we’ve highlighted repeatedly, Morgan Stanley’s auto team, led by Adam Jonas, has just issued a report detailing why they think used car prices could crash by up to 50% over the next 4-5 years.
Housing prices are primed for a major plunge as well. This is especially true on the west coast where tech money and foreign purchasers from Asia have pushed home values up to dizzying levels. Half a million dollars will be lucky to get you a “starter home” in San Francisco, and it was being reported that one poor techie living there was paying $1400 a month just to live in a closet. Many believe that some cities on the west coast will be quite fortunate if home values only go down by 50 percent during the coming crash.
Everywhere you look there are bubbles. In a recent piece, Daniel Lang pointed out some more of them…
- Eric Rosengren, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, recently made a startling tacit admission. We may be in the midst of yet another real estate bubble. Major financial institutions in this country are in possession of over $14 trillion worth of residential real estate loans. That’s well over $40,000 for every man woman and child in America.
- Low interest rates have fueled a bubble in subprime auto loans, and that bubble appears to be reaching its limits. There are now over 1 million ordinary and subprime auto loans that are delinquent, a number that hasn’t been this high since 2009.
- There is now well over a trillion dollars worth of student loan debt in this country; much of it owned by low income families. And there’s little hope that these students will ever see a return on their investment. That’s why at least 27% of student loans are in default. While more than one in four students are in default now, that number was one in nine a decade ago. And if current trends continue, there could be $3.3 trillion of student loan debt by the end of the next decade.
At some point the imbalances become just too great and the system collapses in upon itself.
In other words, we are heading for a massive implosion.
And once the implosion happens, people are going to go absolutely nuts. Anger and frustration are already rising to the boiling point all over the country, and it isn’t going to take much to push millions of Americans completely over the edge.
In a recent interview with Greg Hunter, author James Rickards warned that when things get really bad in America we could actually see what he refers to as “money riots”…
So, could we be facing a “Mad Max” world if the financial system totally crashes? Rickards says, “In ‘Road to Ruin,’ I talk about what I call the money riots. There is a lot of reasons for rioting. When you start shutting banks and the stock exchange and they say you can’t get your money, it’s only temporary, trust us, people will go out and start to burn down banks. The government is ready for that also with emergency response and martial law. . . .
Governments don’t go down without a fight. . . . You can see the shutdown coming because they will try to buy time until they come up with a solution, whether it’s gold, Special Drawing Rights (SDR), guarantees or whatever it might be. There are only two or three possibilities here, but all of them will take time, and they will have to shut down the system. . . . People will not sit for that. So, that means people will riot. They’ll burn down banks. They will smash windows, but what is the reaction to that? The answer is martial law, militarized police, actual military units and you get something that looks like fascism pretty quickly.”
I very much agree with his assessment.
All it is going to take is another major financial crisis and this nation will go completely and utterly insane.
Unfortunately, all of our long-term economic problems have proceeded to get a lot worse since the last time around, and so when things fall apart this time we will likely be looking at a scenario that is absolutely unprecedented in American history.
A lot of people have become very complacent out there these days, but that is a huge mistake.
Just because a crisis is delayed does not mean that it is canceled. And because our leaders have kept making this economic bubble larger and larger, that just means that the coming crisis will be even more painful than it otherwise could have been.
