A roundup of economic news from around the Web.

—Student Loans: Meta Brown and Sydnee Caldwell mark the retreat of student loan borrowers from other credit. “Both these factors — lowered expectations of future earnings and more limited access to credit — may have broad implications for the ongoing recovery of the housing and vehicle markets, and of U.S. consumer spending more generally. While highly skilled young workers have traditionally provided a vital influx of new, affluent consumers to U.S. housing and auto markets, unprecedented student debt may dampen their influence in today’s marketplace.”

—China Credit: Kate Mackenzie examines the rise of borrowing in China. “Here are some updated charts from Michael Werner of Bernstein Research, which show that the total stock of non-government and non-financial debt to nominal GDP continued to climb to new levels in Q1 (it was 193 per cent at the end of 2012)… We’ve mentioned before that shadow financing, as well as tending to be more expensive than bank loans, also seems to generate less growth. A couple of commenters were wondering why credit-to-growth ratio (or credit-to-GDP if you prefer) is important anyway. We think there are a few good reasons as to why. One is that those financing costs keep rising. Another is that China’s economic growth appears to be increasingly derived from credit growth and therefore if the credit growth stops, it might have some ugly effects on growth. But what happens when it does stop?”

—Inflation Targeting: Richard Baldwin and Daniel Gros looks at the changes in inflation targeting. “The Bank of Japan has now joined the club of central banks practising a new, post-Crisis form of inflation targeting. This column discusses the new goals, new tools and new challenges of ‘augmented inflation targeting’. Despite economists’ worries and the many unknowns ahead, there really is no alternative in a post-Crisis world. Augmented inflation targeting is here to stay.”