$3.3 Trillion of Global Debt Starts to Tip the Scale

Of all the reasons given for the slowdown in the global economy, it seems that the world’s ballooning debt load has fallen to near the bottom of the list for some reason. Perhaps it’s because interest rates haven’t shot higher as many expected, but large amounts of debt have other negative implications that may now be coming to light.

In 2012, Carmen Reinhart, Vincent Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff wrote in a paper published on the National Bureau of Economic Research’s website that economies with high debt potentially face “massive” losses of output lasting more than a decade, even if interest rates remain low. Could that be happening now? A U.S. Commerce Department report showed on Tuesday that the three-month annualized rate of change in new orders for nondefense capital goods excluding aircraft — a series that provides insight into capital spending without undue volatility from aircraft orders — declined for the fourth consecutive month. At the same time, the Institute of International Finance issued a report saying that the mountain of global debt expanded by $3.3 trillion last year to $243 trillion, or more than three times worldwide gross domestic product. Total debt in the U.S. grew by $2.9 trillion to more than $68 trillion in the largest annual increase since 2007. What’s truly disturbing is that the IIF said U.S. nonfinancial corporate debt stands at 73 percent of GDP, close to its pre-crisis peak. That helps explain why the first quarter ushered in the most credit ratings downgrades for U.S. companies relative to upgrades since the beginning of 2016, according to S&P Global Ratings data compiled by Bloomberg.