“Cash-for-clunkers” aside, consumers seem bent on actually paying back debt rather than racking it up, a change that if sustained, as it is likely to be, will dampen economic growth not for months but for years, and not just in the U.S.
Outstanding U.S. consumer borrowing fell by a jaw-dropping $21.6 billion in July, according to data released this week by the Federal Reserve, five times more than analysts expected and the second largest monthly drop since the end of World War II.
June’s borrowing was revised to negative $15.5 billion from what had been an impressive minus $10.3 billion.
Over the past year, the stock of consumer loans outstanding has dropped by 4.2 percent, or nearly $110 billion, leaving the total now lower than it was before the crisis began in 2007.
Over the long term, this is exactly what needs to happen. With household wealth badly hit by the housing and stock market crashes balance sheets are stretched. And with a huge baby boomer cohort hurtling towards retirement age also, spending and borrowing were bound to be curtailed.
The question really becomes how entrenched the trend towards the new frugality becomes.
“Memories of debt are very powerful. The generation that grew up in the 1920s and 1930s, was wary of getting into debt as it - and its parents - had experienced two periods of deflation,” Lombard Street Research economist Gabriel Stein wrote in a note to clients.
“We are now in another period of debt repayment and deflation. The thought that US households will forget 2007-2009 and begin to borrow and spend as they did in the early 2000s, is fanciful at best.”
For years the mantra on Wall Street was “don’t bet against the American consumer,” a creature so fabulously resilient as to be almost super human.
Wars and recessions did little to brook consumption and the debt that grew alongside. Even the September 11 attacks saw healthy month on month growth in borrowing in the aftermath.
Whole industries, some now vanished, were predicated on Americans continuing to borrow and spend. It’s an overstatement, but only a slight one, to say that the global economy was predicated on U.S. consumption, which in turn was predicated on consumers borrowing.
THE NEW FRUGALITY
It is doubtless true that lenders of all stripes are making credit harder to get. But there is a good bit of evidence that individuals are changing their preferences. Much of the cash from stimulus handouts earlier this year was used to pay down debt rather than goosing consumption.
A Gallup poll asking Americans how much they had spent in the past day, not including major purchases or normal household bills hit $63 when most recently measured, down from above $100 a year ago.
Now on the face of it, that reduction must be overstated. If consumption had fallen by that magnitude, we’d be in a depression rather than debating the strength of a recovery.
But of course the Gallup poll is a self reported one, and I would be willing to bet that people are now exaggerating how frugal they are, where once they would have exaggerated how much they were spending. That in itself is an important marker of a social trend. Once you wanted the nice people at Gallup to think you were a big shot leaking money, now you probably want them to see you as a saver.
Gallup also looked at the data by generational group, and found that it was not just those in or approaching retirement who were cutting back on self-reported spending. So-called Generation Xers and Millennials, who followed the boomers into the workforce, are also cutting back in similar scale.
But the issue isn’t the rate of savings but the stock of savings as compared to liabilities. While it is reasonably possible to cut back on spending and so increase your savings rate that is far different from suddenly becoming financially robust.
The other thing to bear in mind is that there is a huge difference between stocks and flows. A person can quite quickly raise her savings rate - as we have seen - but that does not mean that her debts are quickly paid off.
If U.S. consumers cut debt as quickly as Japanese corporations did in the 1990s, it will still take them until 2018 to get their debt down to 100 percent of GDP from recent peaks of 130 percent, according to a study from the San Francisco Federal Reserve.
If the trend in consumer borrowing continues, it will not be long before the conversation will turn back to stimulus, quantitative easing, and a relapse for the U.S. economy.
Outstanding U.S. consumer borrowing fell by a jaw-dropping $21.6 billion in July, according to data released this week by the Federal Reserve, five times more than analysts expected and the second largest monthly drop since the end of World War II.
June’s borrowing was revised to negative $15.5 billion from what had been an impressive minus $10.3 billion.
Over the past year, the stock of consumer loans outstanding has dropped by 4.2 percent, or nearly $110 billion, leaving the total now lower than it was before the crisis began in 2007.
Over the long term, this is exactly what needs to happen. With household wealth badly hit by the housing and stock market crashes balance sheets are stretched. And with a huge baby boomer cohort hurtling towards retirement age also, spending and borrowing were bound to be curtailed.
The question really becomes how entrenched the trend towards the new frugality becomes.
“Memories of debt are very powerful. The generation that grew up in the 1920s and 1930s, was wary of getting into debt as it - and its parents - had experienced two periods of deflation,” Lombard Street Research economist Gabriel Stein wrote in a note to clients.
“We are now in another period of debt repayment and deflation. The thought that US households will forget 2007-2009 and begin to borrow and spend as they did in the early 2000s, is fanciful at best.”
For years the mantra on Wall Street was “don’t bet against the American consumer,” a creature so fabulously resilient as to be almost super human.
Wars and recessions did little to brook consumption and the debt that grew alongside. Even the September 11 attacks saw healthy month on month growth in borrowing in the aftermath.
Whole industries, some now vanished, were predicated on Americans continuing to borrow and spend. It’s an overstatement, but only a slight one, to say that the global economy was predicated on U.S. consumption, which in turn was predicated on consumers borrowing.
THE NEW FRUGALITY
It is doubtless true that lenders of all stripes are making credit harder to get. But there is a good bit of evidence that individuals are changing their preferences. Much of the cash from stimulus handouts earlier this year was used to pay down debt rather than goosing consumption.
A Gallup poll asking Americans how much they had spent in the past day, not including major purchases or normal household bills hit $63 when most recently measured, down from above $100 a year ago.
Now on the face of it, that reduction must be overstated. If consumption had fallen by that magnitude, we’d be in a depression rather than debating the strength of a recovery.
But of course the Gallup poll is a self reported one, and I would be willing to bet that people are now exaggerating how frugal they are, where once they would have exaggerated how much they were spending. That in itself is an important marker of a social trend. Once you wanted the nice people at Gallup to think you were a big shot leaking money, now you probably want them to see you as a saver.
Gallup also looked at the data by generational group, and found that it was not just those in or approaching retirement who were cutting back on self-reported spending. So-called Generation Xers and Millennials, who followed the boomers into the workforce, are also cutting back in similar scale.
But the issue isn’t the rate of savings but the stock of savings as compared to liabilities. While it is reasonably possible to cut back on spending and so increase your savings rate that is far different from suddenly becoming financially robust.
The other thing to bear in mind is that there is a huge difference between stocks and flows. A person can quite quickly raise her savings rate - as we have seen - but that does not mean that her debts are quickly paid off.
If U.S. consumers cut debt as quickly as Japanese corporations did in the 1990s, it will still take them until 2018 to get their debt down to 100 percent of GDP from recent peaks of 130 percent, according to a study from the San Francisco Federal Reserve.
If the trend in consumer borrowing continues, it will not be long before the conversation will turn back to stimulus, quantitative easing, and a relapse for the U.S. economy.
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