Question: Consumer Credit The total amount of consumer credit has been increasing steadily in recent years. The following table gives the total U.S. outstanding consumer credit. Source: Federal Reserve.

Year                               Consumer credit (in billions of dollars)

2004                                              2219.5

2005                                              2319.8

2006                                              2415.0

2007                                              2551.9

2008                                              2592.1

a. Find an equation for the least squares line, letting x equal the number of years since 2000.

b. Based on your answer to part a, at approximately what rate is the consumer credit growing per year?

c. Use your result from part a to predict the amount of consumer credit in the year 2015.

d. If this trend continues linearly, in what year will the total debt ?rst exceed $4000 billion?

e. Find and interpret the correlation coefficient.