household debt

With wages stagnant, the proportion of income going into rent is on the rise. While homeowners have been able to reduce their monthly payments to the lowest level in decades via mortgage refinancing and cutting back on credit card usage,…

Summary: I expect the debt ceiling impasse to be overcome today as a result of a Senate-brokered deal. With this manufactured crisis out of the way, we can concentrate on earnings and on the economy. While US growth is on track, I expect…

Economists and the markets have been cheering the jump in housing prices and improving construction statistics. But for many Americans rising demand and higher house prices bring more bad news.

Economic growth is good. But what we want to see is job and wage growth to complement the asset-price growth. Without this catch up on the job and income front, the economy is on an unsustainable course.

This is a more in-depth follow-up piece to the free article I wrote yesterday. In the wake of the recent Ira Sohn conference and the revelation that hedge funds are starting to short housing-related Canadian stocks, there is a lot of bubble…

Yesterday, the Teranet-National Bank National Composite House Price Index for Canada was released. It showed that 12-month home price inflation in Canada was down to 2.0%, the lowest level since November 2009. And given the huge amount of…

A recent ECB household-wealth survey was interpreted by the media as evidence that poor Germans shouldn’t have to pay for southern Europe. This column takes a look at the numbers. Whilst it’s true that median German households are poor…

Some recent data out of Canada points to a slowdown in growth of consumer indebtedness. According to RBC, the non-mortgage consumer debt has grown at the slowest rate in 20 years. This is clearly a positive development, but when taking…

Why does the federal government need to balance its books? Where does the money come from that the government spends? Whose income gets cut when spending gets cut? These are a few of the questions we should be asking when thinking about…

Analysts are beginning to raise concerns about Canada's near-term economic growth. The nation's central bank is holding the overnight rate at 1% and will likely maintain this level for some time to come.