Inside Money: How to pay back record high global debt

Ireland is at the top of the list of countries finding it hard to wean off debt - it has increased its leverage-to-GDP ratio more than 170 per cent over 2007-14. Photo / Getty

I borrowed McKinsey & Co's 'Debt and (not much) deleveraging' from the internet.

The report is an eye-opener (but at 136 pages, also an eye-closer).

According to the McExperts, seven years down the track from the biggest debt-induced financial meltdown in history, the developed world is still loving leverage.

"Rather than reducing indebtedness, or deleveraging, all major economies today have higher levels of borrowing relative to GDP than they did in 2007," the McKinsey paper says. "Global debt in these years has grown by US$57 trillion, raising the ratio of debt to GDP by 17 percentage points."

Some countries have had more trouble weaning themselves off debt than others, as the chart on page 17 illustrates: top of the world is Ireland, which has increased its leverage-to-GDP ratio more than 170 per cent over 2007-14.

Singapore is the surprise number two in this category (which measures debt owed by households, non-financial corporates, and governments), booting up borrowings by about 130 per cent over the same period.

Of the 47 countries measured by McKinsey only five are officially deleveraging: Argentina, Romania, Israel, Egypt and Saudi Arabia - or ARIES ™, my freshly-minted marketing acronym now open for licensing.

New Zealand is not covered in the report but McKinsey includes Australia in its debt warnings.

"Meanwhile, a number of countries in northern Europe, as well as Canada and Australia, now have larger household debt ratios than existed in the United States or the United Kingdom at the peak of the credit bubble," the study says.

According 2012 figures, New Zealand's household debt-to-GDP ratio was slightly above Australia's and the fourth highest in the developed world.

"It is clear that deleveraging is rare and that solutions are in short supply," the McKinsey report says. The post-GFC strategies of mixing central bank largesse with fiscal austerity are not doing the job.

"New approaches are needed to start deleveraging and to manage and monitor debt," the study says. "This includes innovations in mortgages and other debt contracts to better share risk; clearer rules for restructuring debt; eliminating tax incentives for debt; and using macroprudential measures to dampen credit booms."

New Zealand is already experimenting with macroprudential tools but McKinsey's three other ideas may be a harder sell here - particularly its suggestion to ditch mortgage tax breaks.

"The incentives that governments give for real estate vary widely across countries, but include deductibility of mortgage interest expenses and preferential capital gains treatment on residential home sales," McKinsey says. "While these incentives are usually adopted to promote the social goal of homeownership, in practice they provide the greatest benefits for high-income households that pay the highest taxes."