Wolf Richter is all about "Wall Street is wrong, and the WSJ is wrong in particular." The data is the data - people mostly used PUA to pay off their credit cards, and now that there's no more PUA, they're back on credit cards.

That analysis you linked to answers a different question: "does the rise in credit card debt mean anything for the greater economy?" Wolfstreet is firmly in the camp of "there isn't enough credit card debt compared to other kinds of debt to care about." But since "debt" also includes "bonds", of course it's consumer revolving credit is minuscule compared to the bond market.

"Will it have an economic impact?" is also not the question at hand. Fundamentally, poor people no longer have any economic impact. That's one of the main reasons they're pissed off. Does that credit card debt matter more to the people who hold it than it does to Wolf Richter?

Sure, some people are in over their heads, and they’ll fall behind. That always happens. But in the overall credit risk spectrum, this just isn’t a big issue anymore.

I mixed more than ten years of reality television. Got to see quite a sample of Americans plot and scheme about what they would do with a tangible chance at windfall wealth. What did they all want to do? "Pay off my credit cards." To a man. Note that this was invariably prize money beyond their credit card debt, and note that just as invariably, the first and most emphatic answer was always, without question, "pay off my credit cards."

Every.Single.Schlub who splashed across my transom had enough credit card debt that killing it was their Priority 1. That graph? That graph says that every single schlub in America had "kill my credit card debt" as Priority 1. And it shows that they couldn't keep it going.

Credit cards and some types of personal loans, such as payday loans, are the most expensive form of credit, and they often come with usurious interest rates. Credit card rates can exceed 30%. And Americans have figured this out. If they need to fund purchases, many consumers use cheaper loans, including cash-out refinancing of their mortgages.