Six years ago, a touch of schadenfreude would sometimes appear when European policy makers discussed American debt. For during the heady credit bubble, American households were drowning in loans; so much so that even children – and dogs – were being inadvertently offered credit cards. Europeans, by contrast, seemed less addicted to loans. Hence the sense of finger-pointing when America’s subprime woes came to light.

But a remarkable change is under way. Late last month, the International Monetary Fund published its World Economic Outlook, in which a tiny chart (on page 5) shows that American household debt, as a proportion of income, declined from 130 per cent in 2007 to 105 per cent at the end of 2012.

In the same period, eurozone household debt has risen from 100 per cent to almost 110 per cent. Historically, Europeans always had a lower debt ratio than Americans, but those two lines have now crossed. It is a stark contrast to the pattern in 2000, say, when the ratio was only 80 per cent in the eurozone – and 90 per cent in America.