Sunday, January 18, 2009

Watch out, world: Americans are saving again

(Globeandmail.com) In one of the biggest and most misunderstood changes in modern economic history, citizens of the largest economy in the world are suddenly doing something they haven't done in years: They're saving money. It is having myriad consequences, including a tsunami of money in one part of the world, and an air pocket in demand in other parts of the world, especially China.

Americans are suddenly spending less than they earn. While that might not sound heretical or surprising - how long can you go on spending more money than you earn? - it is an epochal moment for the free-spending United States. After saving an average of more than 7 per cent of disposable income until almost 1990, the United States went into a savings tailspin. Savings rates fell, in fits and starts, from 8 per cent, through 6 per cent in the early 1990s, to 2 per cent around 2000, to the ignominy of a negative savings rate by mid-2005.

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