The New Zealand Herald:Weight of debt threatens to crack UK (and US?) economy

The New Zealand HeraldWeight of debt threatens to crack UK (and US?)economy

Basically, the monetary and fiscal experiment that started four years ago hasn't, yet, been completed. We know some of the results - consumers can be persuaded to spend when equity markets are falling - but we don't yet have all of the results. We don't know, for example, what will happen when consumers start to re-trench. Recent data, though, look increasingly worrying: there appears to be no convincing corporate renaissance coming through to take the burden off the consumer in the months ahead. Interest rates may be peaking at unusually low levels, but this can only mean that the underlying foundations for this economic recovery are unusually weak: the whole edifice is in danger of subsiding under the weight of excessive - and policy-induced - debt.