fyi, 2001 Household finances and debt[Fwd: Note to SCF users] -- CITS DE

CITS DEBT WATCH
March 20, 2002

As some of you know, the Survey of Consumer Finances by
the Federal Reserve is the most comprehensive and accurate
breakdown about household assets and liabilities.

Do keep in mind that amounts appearing as home equity loans/
mortgages include sizeable borrowings for other purposes.

In 1999 we estimated the amount borrowed for other purposes
to be in the range of $200 billion or equivalent to about
half of the growth in GDP for that year which equates to a
debt-financed economy.

Since that time a couple of sources had more recent annual
estimates in the range of $50-60 billion -- amounts we consider
to be on the low side.

It still astounds us that borrowing against homes still gets
so little attention, while borrowing against credit cards
appears regularly.  Haven't reporters figured out, yet, that
the balance in credit cards are regularly being rolled over into
home equity loans and home refinancing ?  And credit cards
are only about 3.5% of overall household indebtedness.

Regards,

Dr. Priest
Editor and Publisher
CITS DEBT WATCH

Federal Reserve Announcement:

Dear SCF User,

As of today, a new version of the SCF data and materials is available on
our web site at
http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/oss/oss2/scfindex.html.
There have been changes throughout the site.

For this release, we made an unusually large number of small changes to
correct earlier errors and inconsistencies.  Please refer to
http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/oss/oss2/changes.html for an outline
of
these changes.  The codebooks have also changed in various small ways to
correct inconsistencies detected since the last versions were released. 
We
encourage users to refresh their current data and codebooks with the new
versions.

Several users have reported receiving a virus warning while downloading
and
opening the GZIP version of the main data sets on the last edition of
our
site.  According to our tests, the files did not contain viruses, but
one
popular anti-virus program confused the structure of the GZIP files with
a
type of virus contamination.  In this release, all files previously
compressed with GZIP have been created using Winzip. In our tests, none
of
the new files has generated a virus warning.  Our experience indicates
that
these files can be expanded using any of the popular PC-based
compression
utilities or by using UNZIP or other such utilities in Unix.   Should
you
experience such a virus warning in loading any of our data or
documentation, please notify us as soon as possible.

We are currently processing the data collected in the 2001 SCF.  Because
the great majority of the detailed editing was accomplished before the
end
of the data collection period in December 2001, we remain on schedule to
release a final version of the data to the public in February of 2003
following the publication of a summary article on the survey in the
January
2003 issue of the Federal Reserve Bulletin.  ALL REGISTERED USERS WILL
BE
NOTIFIED BEFORE THE DATA ARE RELEASED.  Notice of any changes in this
schedule will be given by mass email to all registered users.

As in the past, we are very grateful to the comments of SCF data users
for
helping us to detect problems in the data.  If you suspect you have
detected an error, please use the feedback link on our web site on the
"Recent changes" page to inform us.

Thanks,
The SCF Group
-- 


           W. Curtiss Priest, Director, CITS
      Center for Information, Technology & Society
         466 Pleasant St., Melrose, MA  02176
         Voice: 781-662-4044  BMSLIB@MIT.EDU
      Fax: 781-662-6882 WWW: http://Cybertrails.org

---

Dear SCF User,

As of today, a new version of the SCF data and materials is available on
our web site at http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/oss/oss2/scfindex.html.
There have been changes throughout the site.

For this release, we made an unusually large number of small changes to
correct earlier errors and inconsistencies.  Please refer to
http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/oss/oss2/changes.html for an outline of
these changes.  The codebooks have also changed in various small ways to
correct inconsistencies detected since the last versions were released.  We
encourage users to refresh their current data and codebooks with the new
versions.

Several users have reported receiving a virus warning while downloading and
opening the GZIP version of the main data sets on the last edition of our
site.  According to our tests, the files did not contain viruses, but one
popular anti-virus program confused the structure of the GZIP files with a
type of virus contamination.  In this release, all files previously
compressed with GZIP have been created using Winzip. In our tests, none of
the new files has generated a virus warning.  Our experience indicates that
these files can be expanded using any of the popular PC-based compression
utilities or by using UNZIP or other such utilities in Unix.   Should you
experience such a virus warning in loading any of our data or
documentation, please notify us as soon as possible.

We are currently processing the data collected in the 2001 SCF.  Because
the great majority of the detailed editing was accomplished before the end
of the data collection period in December 2001, we remain on schedule to
release a final version of the data to the public in February of 2003
following the publication of a summary article on the survey in the January
2003 issue of the Federal Reserve Bulletin.  ALL REGISTERED USERS WILL BE
NOTIFIED BEFORE THE DATA ARE RELEASED.  Notice of any changes in this
schedule will be given by mass email to all registered users.

As in the past, we are very grateful to the comments of SCF data users for
helping us to detect problems in the data.  If you suspect you have
detected an error, please use the feedback link on our web site on the
"Recent changes" page to inform us.

Thanks,
The SCF Group

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