So the savings gap is getting larger, not smaller and without concerted action, the situation will get still worse.
But Martin Wheatley, the chief executive designate of the Financial Conduct Authority, said that - although there was a savings gap in the UK - people had not trusted financial services.
But Mr Pickering's view is that the onus for saving has switched too far from individuals towards employers, with the result that firms are becoming increasingly unwilling to provide schemes and play their part in filling Britain's savings gap.
So the argument that currency manipulation is somehow more odious or problematic than these other interventions, which all spill over into the real economy, is not all that compelling, particularly when it may be symptomatic of, or responsive to, problems caused by the U.S. savings gap.
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More likely, however, the U.S. savings gap (one of Roach's big scare points) is part of a larger economic or data phenomenon that no one has quite figured out. (Our bullish columnist David Malpass seems ahead on points.) America's growth engine keeps going because lots of capital is available, and at least some of it is being put to more efficient use.
And we can use some of the savings to fill the gap in coverage that forces too many seniors to pay thousands of dollars a year out of their own pockets for prescription drugs.
But the Conservatives attacked the opposition's alternative proposals as a gesture that would not "plug the gap" of savings needed.
If anything, Social Security and Medicare should be expanded to cover the huge gap in retirement savings and health care coverage.
The Group of Thirty argue that it needs to be made easier to bridge the gap between global savings and long-term investment - otherwise countries will struggle to find the necessary funding for expanding infrastructure, factories and education.
Even if this figure substantially overstates the problem, a decision by workers to narrow the gap by increasing their savings rate by, say, ten percentage points would have a huge impact on corporate profits, government tax revenues and GDP growth.
There are other ways to shrink the gap between Germany's high savings rate and relatively low investment, the underlying reason for its current-account surplus.
You can make up some of the gap of this lost capital with domestic savings, but the rest has to be borrowed at a price.
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Some families have other savings, but Federal Reserve and other data suggest that those don't fill the gap for most people.
How, precisely, would the Tories rectify the fiscal position, as they frequently but vaguely pledge to? (Mr Osborne was at it again this week, making a provocative but sketchy speech on the savings to be made through public-service reform.) How would it feel, after a gap of 13 years, to have a Conservative government?
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Those savings may take some time to filter through into hard cash and it may be that the government could fill the gap to allow an immediate pay rise.
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