National debt management burden 'at 180%'
National debt management burden 'at 180%'
- Friday, 19 June 2009The UK's combined consumer debt management burden currently stands at almost twice the nation's after-tax income, it has been claimed.
Global economist Ian Shepherdson noted the
national debt management commitment at the Chartered Institute of Housing Conference and Exhibition earlier this week.
He explained that rising debt and falling incomes have taken consumer debt management levels to 180 per cent of real-terms earnings.
"I don't know what the right level of debt is for the consumer," he said.
"Nobody knows - it depends on individual economies and different circumstances."
However, he suggested that a like-for-like balance between
national debt management demands and earnings seems "a reasonable estimate".
This is in line with the 100 per cent earnings-to-debt ratio that was apparent throughout the 1980s and early 1990s.
But Mr Shepherdson added that the current 180 per cent figure was reached after "enormous acceleration" in consumer borrowing towards the end of the last millennium.

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