Paying it back

The rich world has been deleveraging. This would usually be bad news, however, some countries have managed to make it look easy

When lawmakers shut down the global economy during the covid19 pandemic, they turned to the credit card to keep the lights on. Households and companies did the same. Across the rich world, debt rose while gross domestic product (GDP) fell. As a result, leverage ratios, which measure how much debt countries have compared to how much they produce, leapt. …