The search thing in your link expired, a feature of some government search engines which I find horribly annoying. Nothing on such sites seems to have a real link when you find something, but I did manage to dig it up on my own, and did an end run around their search engine.

The source of the original number seems to be here (scroll down to "consumer card debt.") I had been wondering how one would figure out private financial data like this.

Other sources say the debt situation is improving, which is odd considering the economy is supposed to be going down the crapper. Unfortunately, the Treasury source was using "Average American household" numbers while this source uses numbers for just the "Average American," so the two numbers cannot be directly compared. Still, almost 30 percent improvement is nothing to sneeze at.

The homeless started showing up in greater numbers during the Reagan Administration.

Then they disappeared for the eight years of the Clinton administration. Now I guess they're back again.