Monday, November 4, 2013

Household debt as context


Here's the measure of debt people often show when speaking of "household" debt:

Graph #1: Household Debt

Here it is in context, relative to GDP:

Graph #2: Household Debt relative to GDP

Now look at household debt relative to financial debt:

Graph #3: Household Debt relative to Financial Debt

In the early years, when household debt was small, and small relative to GDP, it was still nine or ten times the size of financial debt.

Financial debt was tiny.

Today, household debt is high, and high relative to GDP, yet it is just about equal in size to financial debt.

Financial debt is tiny no longer.

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