The government subsidy helps the mortgage industry sell larger loans but with such an incredibly inelastic supply in housing, the subsidy mainly leads to higher demand, higher home prices,
more household debt and less household spending on stuff that creates jobs for other people.
Each saw an increase in 2016, at a total of $ 460 billion
more household debt — the largest increase in a decade.
That seems to be popular reasoning these days as consumers have
more household debt than ever before.
Not exact matches
But dissuading
households from taking on
more debt will be up to others.
While Canada's record high
household debt makes the economy
more vulnerable, the bank's cautious approach is helping to manage the risks, Poloz said.
And as organizations such as the IMF and the OECD have constantly warned, high
household debt renders the country far
more vulnerable to economic shocks.
One of my constant points on this blog for the last several years has been that
households» refinancing of their mortgage
debt at lower and lower rates has put
more money in their pockets for spending and for paying down
debt.
But low interest rates, at least in Canada, have pushed
household debt to such vertiginous levels that officials like Carney know they shouldn't be counting on consumer spending to drive the recovery — ergo, the call for
more corporate investment.
A recent paper by the International Monetary Fund warned that «housing busts and recessions preceded by larger run - ups in
household debt tend to be
more severe and protracted.»
«When house prices declined, ushering in the global financial crisis, many
households saw their wealth shrink relative to their
debt,» its authors observed, «and with less income and
more unemployment, found it harder to meet mortgage payments.»
While $ 1.3 trillion won't do much to change the outlook for inflation or future
debt crises, it sure would give a lot of
households one last chance to set things on a
more positive course.
If consumers are tapped out or wary of taking on
more debt, then bank credit can be expanded to the moon and
households will not borrow
more money.
The negative consequences of pushing
more debt on
households is also obvious:
more loans become uncollectible and go into default, creating
more loan losses for banks.
According to the status quo, adding
more debt to
households is the cure to our economic malaise.
But for most
households, high
debt is the disease, not the cure, and adding
more debt to «stimulate spending» is like trying to put out a fire with gasoline.
But that pain today would arguably be less severe than if rates go up years from now, when
households have piled on even
more debt.
The average U.S.
household carries
more than $ 6,000 in credit card
debt.
The
more Poloz and his deputies repeat their contention that the threat posed by
household debt has receded, the
more confidence executives and investors will have that they can make decisions without having to worry about a snap interest - rate increase.
Yet, as a country, we are probably
more vulnerable than we were a decade ago because we failed to take seriously the most important lesson of the crisis: the dangers of housing mania and the perils of
household debt.
Of course, rock - bottom rates and a strong Canadian dollar, he added, are the opposite of what the Canadian economy needs right now in order to kick its current addiction to
household debt and condos and switch to a
more sustainable growth model fuelled by exports and business investment.
Unsurprisingly, low - income
households were among those hardest hit by the recession, and were
more likely to report significant increases in
debt.
His comments come after the IMF in October said that Canada's high
debt levels, and higher - than - average pressure on Canadian
households» ability to pay down that
debt in the private non-financial sector, leaves its economy
more sensitive to tighter financial conditions and weaker economic activity.
By contrast, its GPI performance declined over the same period as the booming province experienced growing wealth disparity, increased
household debt,
more greenhouse gas emissions and a spike in problem gambling, among other things.
That's a reference to Canadian
households» heavy
debt burden, and lower borrowing costs only would encourage
more borrowing.
Examination of data from the Federal Reserve's Survey of Consumer Finances — the central bank's effort to examine the financial conditions of American families — by two Northeastern University scholars shows that
households with
more student
debt are less likely to start businesses than other
households.
More than a quarter, or 26 %, of stressed households said they were more likely to default on credit - card d
More than a quarter, or 26 %, of stressed
households said they were
more likely to default on credit - card d
more likely to default on credit - card
debt.
Speaking in Montreal on Thursday, central bank governor Stephen Poloz called
household debt a major risk to the Canadian economy, suggesting the fear of stoking
more borrowing as one reason he has not been even
more dovish on interest rate policy.
Meanwhile, overall
household debt stood at
more than $ 13 trillion at the end of 2017, according to the Federal Reserve.
Carney was quick and decisive in slashing rates during the crisis,
more so than other central bankers, but the sustained period of low rates has led to a record amount of
household debt and other problems.
Statistics Canada reports that between 1984 an 2009, real average
household debt (that is, adjusted for inflation)
more than doubled.
Over the past 20 years, Canadian
households have
more than doubled their ratio of
debt to disposable income (a key measure of leverage relative to their ability to pay).
And when you remove
debt - free
households from the equation — people with either no
debt or no credit to speak of — the average
debt load was
more than double that, at $ 15,609.
Barry admits that it may be hard to track, but the average
household in the US is carrying $ 8000 or so in
debt and the money would find it's way back to the banks in a
more productive way that also helps our taxpaying citizens.
Households had sharply pulled back their discretionary spending, were tending to try to save
more and were looking to pay down
debts.
, author Jeremy Kronick finds Canadian
household spending, apart from housing, has not dropped despite consumers taking on
more housing
debt and draws lessons for policymakers concerned about a hard landing.
This brings me to a third plot line: that is, how we deal with the higher level of
household debt and higher housing prices, especially in a world of
more normal interest rates.
Empirical research shows that a buildup of
household debt in the economy makes a financial crisis
more probable, so we wanted to understand the costs and benefits of leaning against financial imbalances through tighter monetary policy.
A significant proportion of
households still carry little or no
debt, and in the years ahead might choose to borrow
more.
It would not be surprising if the
household sector had become
more sensitive to news about interest rates, given the increased
debt and
debt servicing loads that it is now carrying.
Foreign visitors to the Reserve Bank over the years have tended to raise questions about
household debt much
more frequently than they have raised questions about government
debt.
I would like to say a little
more about it today and will divide the subject into two aspects: the shorter - term cyclical fluctuations in
household credit growth, and the fact that various
debt ratios have trended upwards over time.
But closing down unnecessary capacity can pay for itself, even if unemployed workers are temporarily put on the government payroll (causing
debt to rise, but usually by less than it had before), but only temporarily as Beijing takes other measures to boost
household income through wealth transfers from the state and so to boost consumption, a form of demand which is likely to be
more labor intensive than the demand created in the process of over-capacity.
Put differently, the only way to reduce
debt is to allocate the cost to some sector of the economy, and broadly speaking these sectors are the
household sector, the private sector, the state sector, and the various
more specialized subsectors within these three — for example
households can consist of rich
households versus the rest, the state sector can be divided among the central government and the provincial governments, the private sector can consist of SMEs, large corporations, labor - intensive industries, capital - intensive industries, the export sector, etc..
Given the nation's
debt load — as of February,
households had a record $ 2.1 trillion of mortgage and non-mortgage
debt — Poloz estimates the economy is 50 per cent
more sensitive to rate hikes than in the past.
More expensive
debt and outright borrowing constraints hamper
households» ability to use credit to smooth their consumption.
Rather, the story is that
households are being
more prudent about
debt and are holding
more liquid assets.
He turned to Tiff Macklem, the bank's senior deputy governor (who is, incidentally, getting
more attention these days as a leading candidate to succeed Carney when he departs next June to take over the Bank of England) to flesh out the
household debt picture with details.
This he presents unequivocally as good news, since it suggests an easing of high, mortgage - driven
household debt levels that have been among Carney's
more acute longstanding concerns about the Canadian economy.
We show that reducing the burden of student
debt on
households enables them to spend
more.»
The speed with which China's GDP growth slows in 2013 will tell us a lot about how determined Beijing is to rebalance the economy in such a way that growth is driven
more by higher
household income and consumption and less by investment funded by rising government and government - related
debt.