The can just keeps getting kicked down the road but eventually the piper will be paid.
Might be out of my own ignorance but I'm starting to get a little bit worried about whether or not I'll be able to count on the future growth of my retirement accounts. It's not just national debt that's a problem. Corporations are super loaded with it and so are former students. It's been easy money for the last several years. And that's kind of been brought to the forefront with this shutdown.
The Next Coronavirus Financial Crisis: Record Piles of Risky Corporate Debt
"Years of low interest rates and easy credit have allowed companies across the board to borrow big, building a record $10 trillion mountain of debt. Lenders expect the vast majority of that money to be repaid on time.
The epicenter of risk involves a subset of that total: $1.2 trillion in leveraged loans, junk-rated debt secured by corporate assets much like mortgages are backed by homes. The market has exploded, ballooning by almost 50%—or $400 billion—since the start of 2015, as investors desperate for the high interest payments these loans provided threw cash at borrowers.
Private-equity firms fueled a lot of the growth, borrowing billions at a time to buy brand names including Dell Technologies and Staples Inc. Smaller but relatively stable public companies like car supplier American Axle & Manufacturing Holdings and electrical supply maker Atkore International Group Inc. also took out leveraged loans to fund share buybacks and acquisitions."