But it seems the two trends have been related, and mutually reinforcing, in both directions. Both the strong rise in spending and the strong rise in gross assets (and leverage) ended some years back now.
BIS central bankers’ speeches  5  I noted to another audience about three years ago that the prominence of household demand in driving growth in the 1990s and 2000s was unlikely to be repeated.5 If there were business strategies that assumed a resumption of the earlier trend, they will surely be disappointed in time, if they have not been already.