Looking at the slew of economic numbers lately…virtually ALL of them ranging from bad to terrible, I kept wondering…

If the economy is supposed to be doing so well…then am I missing something? Or why are these numbers not looking so good?

Then another way to look at it…If the economic numbers look so bad, which they are…then why are so many people in government saying they look good? Or why are they overlooking the real economic numbers?

So many questions…and then this piece of information came along…

I was looking over the most recent home foreclosure filings in the first half of 2026. They are up 21% over last year. Huh, that doesn’t look good. But I wanted to look at more…

I also saw that “Foreclosure starts are up.” Meaning…more families have reached the point where they can no longer keep up with their mortgage and the bank has begun legal action.

Another way to look at it…more families are getting into serious financial trouble.

The whole “starts” aspect is a predictive indicator. They haven’t lost their homes yet…but they are headed that way.

Then I came across this…”Completed foreclosures (REOs) are up.” I really didn’t understand that terminology so I looked into it. “REO” stands for Real Estate Owned. But here is the weird part…This means that the family could no longer pay the mortgage, it went into foreclosure, it went to auction, and no one bought it. So the bank retains ownership of the home. Meaning…the bank is now trying to sell the property. The key point for me was…at the auction no one bought the home…no one wanted to buy it. Odd.

Here is another way to look at it…foreclosures are up AND there are fewer buyers for those homes when they go up for auction. That’s a combination of a lagging indicator…bad things have already occurred…and a predictive indicator…more people aren’t buying those homes.

Not satisfied with that I found “Credit card 90-day delinquencies at a 15-year high.” And that means higher than a year ago as well. But, the flow of new credit card delinquencies has flattened slightly. So I had to research that stat as well. This means that there isn’t a flood of “new” credit card delinquencies more than normal.

But it’s the “why” that caught my attention. Banks are requiring a higher financial quality of customer for their new credit card issuing. Meaning…they are cutting off credit cards for less financially secure folks…leaving those less-qualified folks without access to that credit.

Huh?

Here’s what I think is worth noting:

• 68% of the US economy is consumer purchasing/spending
• 41% of consumer purchasing is done with credit cards
• And banks are eliminating “less qualified” people from acquiring credit cards
• What effect does that have on consumer spending?
• And then…what are the near-term and mid-term effects on the US economy when/if consumer spending drops?

Now here is the really interesting part…So I stepped back and looked for an objective summary. Here is the summary I found…

“The ‘average American’ may still look reasonably healthy in aggregate statistics, but there appears to be a growing segment of households operating with very little financial margin. Those are often the families who first show up in foreclosure, credit card delinquency, or missed auto payments.”

No need for me to interpret that, pretty self-explanatory. But there was one concept that caught my attention…”households operating with very little financial margin.” Huh, “margin”…odd choice of words. Second time in a few days I’ve heard that term.

Okay, back to the click bait title…

If the economy is supposed to be doing so well…then am I missing something? Or why are these numbers not looking so good?