By Request

This is a comparison of debt versus savings, as requested. Unfortunately I do not have data going back as far as I would like.
The debt data is from here.
The savings data is from here.
I am not at all certain I converted the monthly data for debt to quarterly correctly, so all the data may be offset a few months, but I don't think that really matters for our purposes.

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Telling

If I had to pick one economic indicator that defines recent economic history, I think this would have to be it.

(PS - Posting direct from this picture editor thing - pretty cool. I love technology.)

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Intriguing

This is not what I expected. I had always assumed that the top earners were pretty well insulated from recessions, but they are affected much more than others. Not that they are hurting by any measure!

I would guess that this represents how much of their wealth is tied into the stock market.

This is more data pulled from the congressional budget office. Fun stuff!

EDIT - Notice also the explosive growth in the late 90's. This was happening at the exact same time as our brief flirtation with actually paying the nation debt. I have no idea what that means.

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