I don’t know why the hell this happens – someone needs to tell people that they need to live within their lifetime income.

I think that US policy is a lot slacker than our policy – I think the reason NZer’s have borrowed more is because we expect to eventually grow to have the same living standards as other 1st world countries.

This may not be a fair assumption by us though 🙁

It’s been a recurring theme in economics over the last decade (plus some more) that US consumers have been over-extended. Just how are they to learn the need to be somewhat more prudent if not by having credit come back to bite them in the bum?

We suffer from a little of the same over indulgence but given that consumer credit conditions have just tightened in NZ (ANZ upping the deposit required for a new home loan) I feel that we are on the better track.

Of course all the bleatings from various quarters seem to have pushed the political parties (and both the last and current Governments) into throwing money at the problem. I hope this isn’t being seen by Joe Public as an attempt to offset the downturn.

Maybe we have become too developed and think cycles are only how you describe a washing machine program.