Asian Consumers Needed to Fight 'American Zombies': Roach

Published: Tuesday, 21 Jun 2011 | 12:06 AM ET

Supervising Digital Editor, CNBC Asia

U.S. consumers, hobbled by debt and high unemployment, have been develeraging, a process that will take another 3 to 5 years, Stephen Roach, Morgan Stanley’s non-executive chairman and the author of The Next Asia told CNBC on Tuesday.

According to Roach, American consumers, whose buying habits account for 70 percent of America's gross domestic product (GDP), had effectively become "zombies" after the financial crisis.

"In the last 13 quarters since the first quarter of 2008, consumer spending growth in the United States has grown an average annual rate of 0.5 percent. Never before has the American consumer...been this weak for this long," he said. "So something big is going on post-crisis and that's why I refer to them as the zombie generation."

Full story:
http://ori.cnbc.com/id/43474044