The hangover

ALMOST half a decade after the onset of the rich world's credit bust, depressing evidence of its after-effects is visible in everything from feeble output figures to swollen jobless rolls. But for a truly grim picture, read a new report on deleveraging by the McKinsey Global Institute. It points out that in many rich countries the process of debt reduction hasn't even started. America has begun to pare its debt burden, although the drop is small compared with the build-up in 2000-08 (see chart). But many European countries are more, not less, in hock than they were in 2008. There the hangover could last another decade or more.

These transatlantic differences stem from the trajectory of private debt. Government borrowing soared everywhere after 2008 as government deficits ballooned. But in America the swelling of the public balance-sheet has mirrored a shrinking of private ones. Every category of private debt—financial, corporate and household—has fallen as a share of GDP since 2008. The financial sector's debt is now at its 2000 level. Corporate indebtedness, never very high, has shrunk. So, more importantly, has household debt. America's ratio of household debt to income is down by 15 percentage points from its peak in 2008, after rising by over 30 percentage points in the eight preceding years. McKinsey reckons America's households are between a third and halfway through their debt-reduction process. They think the household-debt hangover could end by mid-2013.