Making Cents: A Debtor Nation, All Right

Concerned about increasing consumer debt, economist Edward Yardeni divided the number of U.S. workers on payrolls into the amount of consumer credit outstanding for the first quarter of this year. The average, he found, was $9,500, a $2,500 jump from the $7,000 average during 1990-93. When he included increasingly popular auto leases, the figure was $10,215, compared with $7,975 at the beginning of 1994.