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Household Debt Has Fallen to 2006 Levels, But Not Because We’ve Grown More Frugal

 

    U.S. household debt has finally fallen back to pre-recession levels. So, we’ve finally learned our lesson about spending more than we make, right? Well, not really. The real reason our debt has dipped is that so many Americans defaulted on bills they couldn’t pay

    Moody’s Analytics and the Federal Reserve released a batch of figures last week showing a significant dip in U.S. household debt. According to Moody’s, the combined amount owed on our home mortgages, credit cards, and other outstanding liabilities have gotten down to about $11 trillion, which is about what it was in 2006. Federal Reserve numbers show that household debt as a share of disposable income dipped to 113% in the second quarter of 2012. It hit 134% in 2007, right before the recession.

    The decline in household debt doesn’t necessarily mean we’ve changed our ways. In fact, says Mustafa Akcay, an economist at Moody’s, “nearly 80% of deleveraging is caused by defaults.” Only 20% of the decrease comes as a result of what he calls “voluntary deleveraging,” i.e. the hard work of paying down our debts faster than we borrow.

    “Most of the decline in outstanding aggregate debt has been defaults,” agrees Brookings Institution economist Karen Dynan, who last year analyzed financial institution charge-offs of loans that have gone bad and found that the value of defaults was about two-thirds as large as the total decline in household debt. Still, Dynan believes that defaults have become a lot less important over the past year. She cites Federal Reserve data showing that charge-offs by banks for mortgages and consumer loans have dipped recently. She also attributes lower debt levels to a reduction in new borrowing — though that’s not necessarily a sign that consumers are any less willing to borrow. “Banks are being super-cautious about lending,” she says. “There is a substantial group of households that have much less debt now simply because they have not been able to get loans because terms are so tight.”

    No matter the reason, though, household debt has dipped to much more manageable levels, and economists are now hoping that consumers can help bolster a stronger recovery in 2013. Consumer spending did increase in recent months — not because we bought more, but because we paid more, with the price of everything from food to gas rising steadily. When adjusted for inflation, in fact, our level of spending has remained more or less constant. This additional spending led to a dip in our savings rate in recent months. We saved only 3.7% of our disposable income in August and 4.1% the month before. The U.S. savings rate hit a post-recession high of 5.6% in the third quarter of 2010. “With the lower debt burden and record low borrowing costs, households are positioned to fill in the gap in 2013,” says Akcay. “Whether they will or not depends on how policymakers address the fiscal issues.”

(http://business.time.com/2012/10/19/. Adapted)

When Karen Dynan, towards the end of the fourth paragraph, says that “There is a substantial group of households that have much less debt now simply because they have not been able to get loans because terms are so tight”, she specifically implies that

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Household Debt Has Fallen to 2006 Levels, But Not Because We’ve Grown More Frugal

 

    U.S. household debt has finally fallen back to pre-recession levels. So, we’ve finally learned our lesson about spending more than we make, right? Well, not really. The real reason our debt has dipped is that so many Americans defaulted on bills they couldn’t pay

    Moody’s Analytics and the Federal Reserve released a batch of figures last week showing a significant dip in U.S. household debt. According to Moody’s, the combined amount owed on our home mortgages, credit cards, and other outstanding liabilities have gotten down to about $11 trillion, which is about what it was in 2006. Federal Reserve numbers show that household debt as a share of disposable income dipped to 113% in the second quarter of 2012. It hit 134% in 2007, right before the recession.

    The decline in household debt doesn’t necessarily mean we’ve changed our ways. In fact, says Mustafa Akcay, an economist at Moody’s, “nearly 80% of deleveraging is caused by defaults.” Only 20% of the decrease comes as a result of what he calls “voluntary deleveraging,” i.e. the hard work of paying down our debts faster than we borrow.

    “Most of the decline in outstanding aggregate debt has been defaults,” agrees Brookings Institution economist Karen Dynan, who last year analyzed financial institution charge-offs of loans that have gone bad and found that the value of defaults was about two-thirds as large as the total decline in household debt. Still, Dynan believes that defaults have become a lot less important over the past year. She cites Federal Reserve data showing that charge-offs by banks for mortgages and consumer loans have dipped recently. She also attributes lower debt levels to a reduction in new borrowing — though that’s not necessarily a sign that consumers are any less willing to borrow. “Banks are being super-cautious about lending,” she says. “There is a substantial group of households that have much less debt now simply because they have not been able to get loans because terms are so tight.”

    No matter the reason, though, household debt has dipped to much more manageable levels, and economists are now hoping that consumers can help bolster a stronger recovery in 2013. Consumer spending did increase in recent months — not because we bought more, but because we paid more, with the price of everything from food to gas rising steadily. When adjusted for inflation, in fact, our level of spending has remained more or less constant. This additional spending led to a dip in our savings rate in recent months. We saved only 3.7% of our disposable income in August and 4.1% the month before. The U.S. savings rate hit a post-recession high of 5.6% in the third quarter of 2010. “With the lower debt burden and record low borrowing costs, households are positioned to fill in the gap in 2013,” says Akcay. “Whether they will or not depends on how policymakers address the fiscal issues.”

(http://business.time.com/2012/10/19/. Adapted)

In the fragment of the second paragraph – our home mortgages, credit cards, and other outstanding liabilities have gotten down to about $11 trillion – “outstanding liabilities” can be understood, in simple terms, as

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Household Debt Has Fallen to 2006 Levels, But Not Because We’ve Grown More Frugal

 

    U.S. household debt has finally fallen back to pre-recession levels. So, we’ve finally learned our lesson about spending more than we make, right? Well, not really. The real reason our debt has dipped is that so many Americans defaulted on bills they couldn’t pay

    Moody’s Analytics and the Federal Reserve released a batch of figures last week showing a significant dip in U.S. household debt. According to Moody’s, the combined amount owed on our home mortgages, credit cards, and other outstanding liabilities have gotten down to about $11 trillion, which is about what it was in 2006. Federal Reserve numbers show that household debt as a share of disposable income dipped to 113% in the second quarter of 2012. It hit 134% in 2007, right before the recession.

    The decline in household debt doesn’t necessarily mean we’ve changed our ways. In fact, says Mustafa Akcay, an economist at Moody’s, “nearly 80% of deleveraging is caused by defaults.” Only 20% of the decrease comes as a result of what he calls “voluntary deleveraging,” i.e. the hard work of paying down our debts faster than we borrow.

    “Most of the decline in outstanding aggregate debt has been defaults,” agrees Brookings Institution economist Karen Dynan, who last year analyzed financial institution charge-offs of loans that have gone bad and found that the value of defaults was about two-thirds as large as the total decline in household debt. Still, Dynan believes that defaults have become a lot less important over the past year. She cites Federal Reserve data showing that charge-offs by banks for mortgages and consumer loans have dipped recently. She also attributes lower debt levels to a reduction in new borrowing — though that’s not necessarily a sign that consumers are any less willing to borrow. “Banks are being super-cautious about lending,” she says. “There is a substantial group of households that have much less debt now simply because they have not been able to get loans because terms are so tight.”

    No matter the reason, though, household debt has dipped to much more manageable levels, and economists are now hoping that consumers can help bolster a stronger recovery in 2013. Consumer spending did increase in recent months — not because we bought more, but because we paid more, with the price of everything from food to gas rising steadily. When adjusted for inflation, in fact, our level of spending has remained more or less constant. This additional spending led to a dip in our savings rate in recent months. We saved only 3.7% of our disposable income in August and 4.1% the month before. The U.S. savings rate hit a post-recession high of 5.6% in the third quarter of 2010. “With the lower debt burden and record low borrowing costs, households are positioned to fill in the gap in 2013,” says Akcay. “Whether they will or not depends on how policymakers address the fiscal issues.”

(http://business.time.com/2012/10/19/. Adapted)

According to the text,

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The Echoes Between Student Loans and Mortgages

By Karen Weise on October 16, 2012

 

    Earlier this year, the country’s largest mortgage servicers agreed to reform their practices and pony up $25 billion in a multistate settlement to atone for faulty foreclosures. A new report out Tuesday from the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau says the companies that manage student loans have many similar problems that haunted mortgage servicers.

    The CFPB’s private student loan ombudsman, Rohit Chopra, wrote the report based on nearly 3,000 borrower complaints and says he found an “uncanny” parallel to mortgages. Ninety-five percent of the complaints collected by the CFPB focused on problems triggered when students interact with servicers, which collect monthly payments on behalf of investors who own the loan. Chopra said borrowers often face surprises, runarounds, and dead ends – payments that aren’t properly applied, information that’s conflicting, and servicers unwilling or unresponsive to borrowers looking to create payment plans.

    “I see these complaints in our report serving as an early warning,” Chopra said in a call with reporters, explaining that the CFPB and others should make sure student loan servicing isn’t a “redux” of mortgage loan servicing.

    Chopra also provided a glimpse of how the CFPB handles the problems that borrowers report. Of the 2,857 complaints Chopra’s office has received, 961 people got an explanation or resolution from the servicer, and 387 people received some sort of relief, be it nonmonetary (like a new payment plan) or direct compensation, Chopra told me. For borrowers who received monetary relief, the median amount was $1,572, though one borrower received nearly $84,000. Chopra says getting compensation is rare because the loans themselves don’t allow for much flexibly. “Even if [repayment options aren’t] something that’s in the terms of the note, there are still issues that people are facing,” he said. He hopes that by airing the grievances, reforms might help borrowers in the future.

    Chopra says regulators and the Department of Education should investigate whether the problems he found in the complaints were systemic—and if so, should consider stronger oversight. He also thinks policymakers should find ways to encourage modifications and develop a market for refinancing student loans. But perhaps Chopra’s simplest recommendation was to get more students to learn about, and participate in, the income-based repayment program that’s already available on federal student loans. After all, as the country’s experience working with mortgages has taught us, working with government loans is a lot easier than reforming the private market.

(http://www.businessweek.com. Adapted)

Chopra, in the last paragraph, states that

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  Last week, my four-year-old daughter, Sally, was invited to a children’s birthday party and I decided to take her by subway. Sally was very excited because she had never been on the subway before. She sat by the window and asked questions about everything she saw. Suddenly, a middle-aged lady sat opposite Sally. “Hello, little girl,” she said. Sally didn’t answer at first but looked at her curiously. The lady was dressed in a blue coat and a large hat. The train left the station and the lady took out a makeup bag and began to put on some makeup on her face.

  “Why are you doing that?” Sally asked her, speaking at last.

  “To make myself beautiful,” the lady answered. She put away    12    makeup bag and smiled kindly at Sally.

  “But you are still ugly,” Sally said

  Sally was amused, but I was very embarrassed!

(L.G. Alexander. First Things First, 1968. Adaptado.)

Ao final, tomamos conhecimento de que a pessoa que relata o fato narrado no texto ficou

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  It was Christmas, and there was a big party in the house. Guests came and went, but the party continued. Then the bell rang. Several people shouted, “Come in!” and a short man opened the front door and came in. Nobody knew him, but the host went to meet him and took him   11    the bar for a drink. The man sat there happily for an hour and a half, drank and talked. Then suddenly he stopped and looked at his host. “You see,” he said, “I’m your neighbor, but nobody invited me to this party. I don’t know you, I don’t know your wife and I don’t know any of your guests. My wife,    12    is waiting for me in our car, just wanted us to go to the cinema, but one of your guests’ cars was in front of our gate, so I came here to find the driver!”

(L. A. Hill. Elementary Stories for Reproduction, 1972. Adaptado.)

 

Para responder à questão, assinale as alternativas que completam corretamente as respectivas lacunas numeradas no texto.