Shorty...did you even READ the article you posted? It blew away the very point you thought you were making. It pointed out that the 2.8% number is phoney. It criticized and disproved the very quote you put in your post...Sheesh.
Read stuff before you post it.....Here's the nut.
Have US households suddenly seen the light and started saving again? A slightly closer look at the national accounts shows where that light shined from. The only thing unusual about the second quarter of 2008 was a sudden drop in "personal current taxes," which resulted in an increase in "disposable personal income," the denominator for the savings rate. Ah, yes, that's what had slipped my mind (and perhaps Mr. Luskin's as well) about the 2nd quarter. (If the reason for the drop in taxes isn't immediately apparent, you might want to check the headlines for January 24. But I'm guessing that rebate check didn't come as a surprise.)
Apparently Americans thought it might be better to save some of of the "stimulus" money for, say, the 3rd quarter or the 4th quarter...or even next year? So, yes, the savings rate did go up. That's one of the usual results of a fiscal stimulus. In fact, a fiscal stimulus is exactly how Franklin Roosevelt managed to get the savings rate back into positive territory during....what was it?...oh, yeah, the Great Depression. |
