CHART OF THE DAY: The Great Household Deleveraging May Finally Be Over
Feb 28, 2013, 21:30 IST
The New York Fed just published its latest Quarterly Report On Household Debt And Credit.
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At $11.34 trillion in Q4 2012, total household debt is up from $11.31 trillion in Q3. This suggests that the great consumer deleveraging story may be over.
Mortgages account for 71 percent of the debt, which makes the $966 billion of student loans look like peanuts. So, even as people warn about a student debt bubble, the implications would almost certainly be less severe than the housing bubble we recently experienced.
This is the second time since the crisis that there's been a slight sequential uptick in household debt, so we'll have to see if this trend continues, or if it's another blip.
From the New York Fed:
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