Got this in my John Maudlin email. Had not seen the numbers before. It confirms mine and others conviction that the so-called deleveraging is write-offs. In particular, mortgage debt. As Karl points out each month, consumer debt ex-student loans, is steadily decreasing.

Quote:

But in those same 10 quarters, $542.2 billion in mortgage debt was charged off and $333.8 billion in consumer debt for an $875.9 billion total. As shown in the last three columns, after accounting for charge-offs, mortgage debt actually rose a bit, $24.2 billion to $10 trillion, consumer debt climbed $159.2 billion to $2.4 trillion and the total rose $183.4 billion to $12.4 trillion. The rise in mortgage debt ex charge-offs is so small that it’s merely a rounding error, but it’s surprising that it didn’t fall significantly. Perhaps financially stressed homeowners who didn’t lose their homes to foreclosure have not been able to reduce their mortgage debt.