The hangover - America is recovering from the debt bust faster than European countries. Why?

ALMOST half a decade after the onset of the rich world’s credit bust, depressing evidence of its after-effects is visible in everything from feeble output figures to swollen jobless rolls. But for a truly grim picture, read a new report on deleveraging by the McKinsey Global Institute. It points out that in many rich countries the process of debt reduction hasn’t even started. America has begun to pare its debt burden, although the drop is small compared with the build-up in 2000-08 (see chart). But many European countries are more, not less, in hock than they were in 2008. There the hangover could last another decade or more.
These transatlantic differences stem from the trajectory of private debt. Government borrowing soared everywhere after 2008 as government deficits ballooned. But in America the swelling of the public balance-sheet has mirrored a shrinking of private ones. Every category of private debt—financial, corporate and household—has fallen as a share of GDP since 2008. The financial sector’s debt is now at its 2000 level. Corporate indebtedness, never very high, has shrunk. So, more importantly, has household debt. America’s ratio of household debt to income is down by 15 percentage points from its peak in 2008, after rising by over 30 percentage points in the eight preceding years. McKinsey reckons America’s households are between a third and halfway through their debt-reduction process. They think the household-debt hangover could end by mid-2013.
In Europe private debt has fallen much less and in some cases even risen. In Britain the financial sector’s debts have grown since 2008. In Spain corporate debt, far higher as a share of GDP than in most rich countries, has barely budged. But the biggest difference is among households. Even countries which saw the biggest surges in household debt during the bubble era, such as Britain and Spain, have scarcely seen a dent since 2008. McKinsey’s analysts reckon it will take British households up to a decade to work off their debt burdens.
It’s not that American households have been more frugal or disciplined. Household debt has fallen largely thanks to defaults, particularly on mortgages. America had a bigger housing bust; in some states non-recourse lending rules make default easier (people can walk away from home loans without fear of losing other assets). Some two-thirds of America’s $600 billion decline in household debt is due to defaults. With another $250 billion of mortgages in the process of foreclosure, further reduction is likely.
Europe’s post-bubble economies, in contrast, have seen smaller drops in house prices, lower mortgage costs thanks to variable interest-rate mortgages, and gentler treatment from banks. The Bank of England suggests that around 12% of British mortgages receive some kind of forbearance. Fewer people are turfed out of their homes, but the millstone of debt weighs for longer.
America’s private-sector debt reduction has also taken place against the backdrop of loose fiscal policy. Although state and local governments have been cutting back, the federal government has (at least until now) put off most fiscal tightening. In Europe, however, the sovereign-debt crisis means governments have been forced, or chosen, to undertake swingeing budget cuts long before the private sector’s deleveraging is done.

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