y comparison, a decade ago, the seven-year loan only made up about 10% of all loans.

Why? Because that's the only type of loan increasingly more Americans can afford to amortize.

The longer loan durations are a clear sign that the American middle class is growing broker by the day, and, as we pointed out in our recent article about millennials putting items like sneakers and sweaters on installment plans, the US consumer's creeping debt burden is, among other things, the result of auto prices growing rapidly while real incomes have barely budged. It is also the result of little to no financial education piled on top of a pathological shopping addiction.