Thursday, September 13, 2012

Europe is paralyzed by personal debt


Inspect data here.

4 comments:

James Higham said...

I really thought we were top of the list. Denmark eh?

Paddington said...

The whole system is designed to make us consume and get further in debt.

hatfield girl said...

But, household gross debt is neither here nor there, is it? What matters is household net debt, ie, net of gross assets held by the household sector.

In many countries the position is reversed from what is portrayed in this chart as households from some of the same countries shown here hold spectacularly high gross assets. In Italy gross assets are at least six times as large as gross liabilities.

Sackerson said...

Italy comes away from this comparison very well, HG. And whatever one's assets, the relationship between debts and income affect disposable income and therefore the potential for economic growth; if interest rates were not so absurdly low, we would now be feeling that truth in spades.