How to escape the trap of excessive debt

Martin Wolf: The rich will benefit if we create sustainable demand with less household borrowing. "The savings of the rich might have led to a current account surplus, as in late-19th-century UK. But the rich of the rest of the world have sought to accumulate US assets, and so generated a persistent US current account deficit. Except when the pre-financial crisis housing bubble drove up private ­investment, this has also remained too weak." The chief economics commentator at the Financial Times analyses.