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Britons are buying less on credit
A sharp decline in household spending on the never-never, and
especially spending on credit cards, is a trend that must surely be
welcomed. The Bank of England said last week inits quarterly credit health check that high street banks were about to witness the biggest decline in such borrowing since records began 12 years ago.
Threadneedle Street said its index of demand for credit card lending
over the three months to the end of March had dropped to -20.7 from
-7.2.
That is a far cry from the summer of 2017, when consumer borrowing
soared above £200bn and MPs across the political spectrum became alarmed
at the return of binge buying on plastic.
At that time, with wages flat or at least not rising by more than
inflation, policymakers feared that households were supplementing their
incomes with borrowing to the degree that they had in the run-up to the
2008 financial crash.
