But, third, to date the amount of new borrowing does not appear, overall, to be imprudent. The rise in the value of loan approvals over the past year of around 20 per cent is certainly significant.
It’s important to note, however, that scaled by the amount of credit outstanding, the rate of this flow over recent months, while clearly well off its 2011 low point, is actually not that high compared with longer-run history (Graph 2). It’s only a little above 2008 lows, in fact.