The consequences of all this: Ever more borrowers will soon be unable to make payments on their homes or their credit cards. Then consumer spending, and thus corporate profits, will fall, and the shrinking economy will even further depress workers' wages.
For most people, the dream of easy money will never come true, because in reality only the truly rich can live that dream. Everyone else will have to keep working -- but now they will work for ever less, shackled as they are to a mountain of debt, both public and private. (The costs of debt service, on our immense national debt (which is $9 trillion and rising) will take ever more out of our paychecks, as federal taxes continue to rise because of it. Plus, with home values plummeting, local governments will receive ever less from property taxes on all these newly devalued homes. So local government services and service personnel will be drastically cut back, too, again reducing the supply of free-wheeling consumers and home buyers.
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