Household Debt : Falling. Slowly.

The New York Fed just put out its latest report on household debt. It's a good, quick-ish look at the debt picture for ordinary Americans. Here's the key graph:

It shows:

* Household debt is overwhelmingly about mortgages.

* Mortgage debt shot up during the housing boom, and has slowly — slowly — been falling for the past several years.

* The decline has been driven both by people paying off their mortgages and by people going through foreclosure. (Actually, that fact is shown by another graph.)

* Also, as you've probably heard: Student debt is rising.

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