Capital Flight inside the Euro Area: Cooling Off a Fire Sale
Matthew Higgins and Thomas Klitgaard Countries in the euro area periphery such as Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain saw large-scale capital flight in 2011 and the first half of 2012. While events unfolded much like a balance of payments crisis, the contraction in domestic credit was less severe than would ordinarily be caused by capital […]
Improving Access to Refinancing Opportunities for Underwater Mortgages
Since the onset of the housing crisis, a focus of policymakers has been to help underwater homeowners lower their monthly mortgage payments by refinancing, principally through the Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP).
Just Released: Has Household Deleveraging Continued?
Today’s release of the 2012Q2 Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit indicates a continuation of the downward trend in household debt, which followed a long period of substantial increases.
“Flip This House”: Investor Speculation and the Housing Bubble
The recent financial crisis—the worst in eighty years—had its origins in the enormous increase and subsequent collapse in housing prices during the 2000s.
Short‑Term Debt, Rollover Risk, and Financial Crises
One of the many striking features of the recent financial crisis was the sudden “freeze” in the market for the rollover of short-term debt.
Just Released: Household Debt and Credit Developments in the Nation and the Region in 2011:Q1
This post gives our summary of the 2011:Q1 Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit, released today by the New York Fed. The report shows signs of healing in household balance sheets in the United States and the region, as measured by consumer debt levels, delinquency rates, foreclosure starts, and bankruptcies— although the regional data are somewhat mixed. The report captures the debt and credit activity of an anonymous, nationally representative panel of U.S. households.
Have Consumers Been Deleveraging?
Since its peak in summer 2008, U.S. consumers’ indebtedness has fallen by more than a trillion dollars. Over roughly the same period, charge-offs—the removal of obligations from consumers’ credit reports because of defaults—have risen sharply, especially on loans secured by houses, which make up about 80 percent of consumer liabilities. An important question for gauging the behavior of U.S. consumers is how to interpret these two trends. Is the reduction in debts entirely attributable to defaults, or are consumers actively reducing their debts? In this post, we demonstrate that a significant part of the debt reduction was produced by consumers borrowing less and paying off debt more quickly—a process often called deleveraging.