2008 US/World Housing Crisis and beyond. What? Us Canucks Worry?
No need. We were proud of our doughty bank system that rode out the storm without risky mortgage investment holdings collapsing like dominos and flushing debt burdened homeowners down the toilet.
Not so wise to be smug, though. If we’d at least woken fully to the extent of the crisis, Canadian homeowners might now be prudently wary rather than cruising for a bruising.
Alas, the latest Statistics Canada figures can be studied as an index of national unwariness. U.S. debt burden, including its high proportion of mortgage debt, has shrunk. In Canada, that debt has continued to rise over the last decade.
Canadian home ownership is slowly decreasing but still well north of 2/3 of the population. It includes an awful lot of people so debt-burdened that they could fail to weather an economic downturn and become victims of the nation’s growing affordable housing crises, not floating (barely) above them.
Read more at WOLF STREET: The State Of The Canadian Debt Slaves, How They Compare To American Debt Slaves, And The Bank Of Canada’s Response
