Can the growth in the U.S. current account deficit be sustained? How does the flow of deficits feed the stock of debt? And how will the burden of servicing this debt affect future deficits and economic growth? These are some of the questions we address in this Strategic Analysis....

Rising home prices and low interest rates have fueled the recent surge in mortgage borrowing and enabled consumers to spend at high rates relative to their income. Low interest rates have counterbalanced the growth in debt and acted to dampen the growth in household debt-service burdens. As past...

Can the growth in the U.S. current account deficit be sustained? How does the flow of deficits feed the stock of debt? And how will the burden of servicing this debt affect future deficits and economic growth? These are some of the questions we address in this Strategic Analysis

Rising home prices and low interest rates have fueled the recent surge in mortgage borrowing and enabled consumers to spend at high rates relative to their income. Low interest rates have outerbalanced. The growth in debt and acted to dampen the growth in household debt-service burdens. As past...

On September 15, the Federal Reserve convened 14 large credit derivatives-dealer banks to an unusual meeting (Beales 2005b). The last such meeting occurred on September 16, 1998, in secret. At that time, a major financial institution was melting down and threatening to take some large banks with...