SFY - Household Debt: The Anchor Dragging Economic Recovery

For several years before February 2020, I read about how US households had been in good shape financially. Debt, measured in nominal terms, climbed past 2008 levels a couple of years ago (see graph below). However, experts often brought up two data points to support the argument that consumer debt levels had in fact improved significantly over the past decade:

1. household leverage relative to GDP had dropped from a peak of around 82% in 2009 to just north of 70% recently;
2. debt service ratio, i.e., total required household debt payments in proportion to total disposable

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