Of all the trends that led to the economy picking up at the end of 2013 and beginning of 2014, perhaps the most underlooked was that U.S. households stopped reducing their debt.

After nearly five years of saving money and paying down debt, Americans finally stopped tightening their belts halfway through last year, with aggregate household debt bottoming out at $11.1 trillion. Over the last half of 2013, consumers added more in loans, led by mortgages, for the first time since Wall Street’s collapse.

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