Graph 4  At the same time, household gearing has risen sharply, with housing debt now equal to about 55 per cent of the value of the US housing stock.
BIS Review 153/2010  3  Understandably, the reaction of households to all this has been to stop borrowing, cut back on spending and increase savings, all of which means that US households are not going to be the driving force of the global economy that they were for much of the period since the mid 1990s.