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Youth conference: The International Youth Leadership Conference
arrangements are corning along, but travel arrangements are tricky
because of heavy travel around Christmas and New Years. Any of you
who don't have travel arranged for your representatives, please call
the Y.O.U. office. We can help with the leverage of Wilshire Travel
in getting the representatives on a flight.
In the next Pastor's Report we hope to have some word on the guest
speakers and their topics. Again we plan to tape the featured speakers
and make cassettes available to each Church.
As always, Y.O.U. is grateful for your support and all your constructive
suggestions as well.
--Jim Thornhill, Y.O.U.
ON THE WORLD SCENE
U.S. DEBT LOAD: CLOSE TO $4 TRILLION AND RISING! With increasing
numbers of economists predicting a recession in the United States for
1979 (a mild one, they hope), it might be good to examine how well the
U.S. economy has fared since the last slowdown about three and-a-half
years ago.
The answer: not well at all. The relative prosperity Americans have
enjoyed has been largely a false one, fueled by an unprecedented explo
sion of indebtedness. Total debt in the U.S., public (governmental)
and private, has in this short period of time zoomed up 42% from around
$2.5 trillion to $3.9 trillion!
The October 16 issue of Business Week devoted special emphasis to this
critical development in a cover article
titled, "The New Debt Economy."
It said:
"The debt economy, which flourished from 1968 through 1974, ended
abruptly when the worst recession in four decades forced the U.S. to
go slower in adding to what was then a $2.5 trillion tower of debt.
Since those dark days -- when the tower escaped toppling only by the
thinnest of margins -- the accepted wisdom has been that four years
of prosperity have put an end to excessive borrowing, eliminated the
peril of widespread defaults in the U.S. and abroad, and restored the
world's financial system to good health.
"Nothing could be further from the truth. Since late 1975 the U.S. has
created� n�w debt economy,� ere� explosion so wild and so eccentrlc
that it dwarfs even the borrowing binge of the early 1970s."
Business Week goes on to show that in the past three plus years of the
"new debt economy" corporate debt has risen 36% to slightly more than
$1 trillion, while state and local government debt has increased 33%
to $295 billion. "More ominous," to use the words of the editors of
Business Week is the fact that, over the same period, consumer install
ment debt has'soared 49% to $300 billion, residential mortgage debt
has zoomed up 54% to $750 billion, and the borrowing of the U.S. govern
ment, including the Treasury and related agencies, is up 47% to $825
billion.
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