Canadian Consumer Toxic Debt? What do we have to show for it?

I am starting to research monetary policy and the money supply system.. in my travels I came across this Canadian money supply page that talks about how much savings Canadians have along with how much debt Canadian individuals have.

I was alarmed that Canadians have $412 billion in Consumer debt, and $1.3 trillion in debt when you add in mortgages.

I can understand the mortgages part of the equation as this debt is backed by real assets.

The $412 billion I would assume includes car loans, renovations loans, lines of credit and credit cards. I contacted the government of Canada and they couldn't give me an exact breakdown of the consumer debt portion.

What I'm really worried about is, what kind of assets do we have to back these debts? IE... are all of these debts based on highly depreciated assets?

The basis of my comment is the current collapse of the stock market.. the recent economy has been built on debt on all levels... now that the economy is crashing , there is alot of debt that we're dealing with, but it doesn't seem like this debt is backed up by solid assets.

So.... if our $412 billion in consumer debt isn't backed up by real assets, then how does that make our economy look?

It makes the Canadians balance sheet look pretty weak.

I should say that the it appears from the chart that the money supply in Canada (M2++ gross) is $1,735,973,000,000 ($1.8 trillion) so we have cash to back up the debt.

The point of this post is to express concern so that we can become a little more aware of what we're using consumer debt for. If we're buying holiday & travel, restaurants, and electronics which all have zero asset value after the purchase, then we're buying too many empty items with our consumer credit.

The other point I wanted to bring across.. if we're paying an average of 10% on our consumer credit... that's $41.2 billion dollars per year in interest. Is that what you want to be spending your hard earned dollars on?