A warning that America's debt bubble is popping — bad news for households, pensions, and the wider financial system, because this time the bad loans are everywhere, not just mortgages.

• Car loan delinquencies just hit an all-time high, worse than during the 2008 crash, and credit card and student loan defaults are near records too.
• People are drowning because prices and interest rates have risen faster than wages, plus hidden costs like property taxes that don't show up in inflation numbers.
• Car debt has ballooned: the average car loan is now near $45,000, monthly payments often top $1,000, and loans stretch 7 to 10 years, leaving people owing far more than the car is worth.
• This bad debt gets bundled and sold as complex securities to pension funds and hedge funds using borrowed money, so when the loans go bad the losses spread through the whole system.
• Firms like BlackRock, Blackstone, and Blue Owl collect fees no matter what, while pensions and banks eat the losses if defaults hit.

Outlook: If defaults keep climbing, banks will pull back on lending and the flow of money and credit could freeze — which is what a financial crisis looks like.