Good news, bad news, until you look at the scale...

...then it's all really bad news.  Consumer indebtedness has been falling fast as a percentage of disposable income at the same time that Federal indebtedness has been rising rapidly.  So they cancel each other out, right?  Think again.  Take a closer look at the scale: personal indebtedness has fallen by a few points of disposable income while during the same time period the Feds have exploded their debt by almost 40% of the much larger GDP.  There's probably twenty times more Federal debt growth than personal debt reduction.  Once again private virtue is consumed by public venality.  With barely a burp.