10 Reasons to Be Cautious

5. Peo­ple still owe way too much money. House­holds, cor­po­ra­tions, states, local gov­ern­ments and, of course, Uncle Sam. It’s the debt, stu­pid. Accord­ing to the Fed­eral Reserve, total U.S. debt — even exclud­ing the finan­cial sec­tor — is basi­cally twice what it was 10 years ago: $35 tril­lion com­pared to $18 tril­lion. House­holds have barely made a dent in their debt bur­den; it’s fallen a mere 3% from last year’s all-time peak, leav­ing it twice the level of a decade ago.6. The jobs pic­ture is much worse than they’re telling you. For­get the “offi­cial” unem­ploy­ment rate of 9.5%. Alter­na­tive mea­sures? Try this: Just 61% of the adult pop­u­la­tion, age 20 or over, has any kind of job right now. That’s the low­est since the early 1980s — when many women stayed at home through choice, dri­ving the num­bers down. Among men today, it’s 66.9%. Back in the ‘50s, inci­den­tally, that fig­ure was around 85%, though allowances should be made for the higher num­ber of elderly peo­ple alive today. And many of those still work­ing right now can only find part-time work, so just 59% of men age 20 or over cur­rently have a full-time job. This is bullish?Today’s bonus ques­tion: If a laid-off con­trac­tor with two kids, a mort­gage and a car loan is work­ing three night shifts a week at his local gas sta­tion, how many iPads can he buy for Christmas?7. Hous­ing remains a dis­as­ter. Fore­clo­sures rose again last month. Banks took over another 93,000 homes in July, says fore­clo­sure spe­cial­ist Real­ty­Trac. That’s a rise of 9% from June and just shy of May’s record. We’re head­ing for 1 mil­lion fore­clo­sures this year, Real­ty­Trac says. And nat­u­rally the rip­ple effects hurt all those home­own­ers not in fore­clo­sure, by dri­ving down prices. See defla­tion No. 4 above.

via is-a-crash-coming-10-reasons-to-be-cautious: Per­sonal Finance News from Yahoo! Finance.