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You're correct about the figure not being adjusted for inflation but the metric on the rise compared to last year is concerning:

> Credit card lenders wrote off $46bn in seriously delinquent loan balances in the first nine months of 2024, up 50 per cent from the same period in the year prior and the highest level in 14 years

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That is not an independent variable. For example, lenders could have decided that the market in 2023 was on the way up and not writing off as much debt would allow them to collect more delinquent accounts in the future. In 2024, they think that anyone who would have been able to pay them has done so, so they wrote off the defaults they postponed from 2023 and also increased the speed of their write offs because their predictions about the economy changed. While it tells you something, it’s certainly not an accurate measure of spending habits or ability to pay.

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