Debt calm

摘要

Economists trying to explain the feeble pace of America's recovery regularly blame deleveraging: the multi-year process of paying off the debts accumulated before the crisis. Yet for households, at any rate, deleveraging has stopped. Mortgage debt bottomed out in the middle of last year and is now rising again. Student and car loans are rising briskly. Only home-equity and consumer loans continue to shrivel. In absolute terms, household debt is rising again (see chart). Relative to household income, it peaked at 135% in 2007, fell to 109% at the end of 2012, and has roughly stabilised around that level.