Never Never Land - Britain Banks On Debt

IT seems that no matter how many warnings about heavy debt the humble householder and consumer are given, we just can’t seem to stop our lust for shiny, bright new things.

According to a report by economist Marchel Alexandrovich - snappily entitled “The savings ratio turns negative – is a recession around the corner?” - households are now dipping into their savings in order to fund current spending, something that hasn’t happened on a major scale since 1989.

The Telegraph reports that figures from the Bank of England also show that families are borrowing even more against the value of their homes as their “appetite for debt returns”.

While the Guardian uses Bank of England statistics to reveal that Britons took £2.4 billion more out of their homes in the last quarter of 2006 as house prices rose again.

With families’ savings now falling for the first time since the late Eighties, a recession could be on the horizon, so too another rise in interest rates.

If only those shiny, bright new things weren’t so darn shiny, bright and new.

Anorak

Posted: 3rd, April 2007 | In: Money Comment | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink