The reason Western consumers had to borrow was not to absorb the Asian surpluses, it was to compensate for their stagnant incomes caused by macro-economic policies that favor short term corporate and financial profits over everything else.
I completely disagree with this. Western countries had to absorb Asian surpluses or building up trade barriers, as Asian countries have/had explicitly mercantilist policies. Incomes were stagnant largely because of the competition with low wage countries. Wages in the US, UK, Ireland, Spain have grown faster in recent years than e.g. German wages. If your thesis would be correct, German consumers would have borrowed much more than consumers in the above countries. This is clearly not the case, e.g. the term 'Western consumers' is not really what I think is appropriate.
Among the reasons I would suggest for the anglo disease

• different cultural acceptance of debt
  
• different cultural view on showing off, btw. keeping up with others
  
• type of prevalent industry before it began
  
• expectation of future financial situation
  
• autosuggestion into the believe that high deficits are no problem
  
• policy reaction (at least under Clinton) to counter what you suggest as reason, but not to deal with a given Asian surplus (that means, if the state borrows less, consumers will borrow more)