Those actions resulted in the spikes in the saving rate shown in Chart 5.
The saving rate, some 2.3% in 2007, may have risen as high as 11.5%, says Alan Barrett at ESRI, a Dublin-based research institute.
"The monthly up-and-down pattern in the saving rate over the course of the second quarter reflects nothing more than consumer smoothing through transitory income fluctuations--in this case, due to the one-time stimulus payments, " said Mike Feroli, senior economist at JPMorgan Chase.
Consumers have borrowed more money against the rising value of their homes, allowing them to extract some of their capital gains and so spend more than their income: the saving rate has fallen from 9% in 1990 to minus 2% last year.
Some numbers, such as the low saving rate and the colossal current-account deficit, suggest that the economy's course is unsustainable.
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The personal saving rate in July dipped to a negative 0.9%, the 16th month in a row the rate has been negative.
The household saving rate dropped from 26 percent to 12 percent over the last five years.
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The household saving rate dropped from 26% to 12% over the last five years.
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When the economy was strong, most consumers were cautious about saving less and spending more (the euro-area saving rate has barely budged in the past three years).
As a result, the household saving rate is now a negative 2% of disposable income.
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Others noted that the slowdown in the housing market might raise the household saving rate, undermining demand.
The combined saving rate of households and firms in America has already fallen to its lowest level ever.
Indeed, one of the strongest arguments for a shift to individual provision is that it should raise the personal saving rate, which would help to foster economic growth.
If you both have good to excellent credit, that will go a long way to improve your approval odds and the likelihood of landing the lowest interest rate and saving the most money.
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The second result from a rise in capital gains taxes is that it would change the return on investment which would lower the overall rate of saving and investing and as a consequence lower the overall capital investment which in turn would lower GDP growth and expansion.
Ed McKelvey, an economist at Goldman Sachs, points out that the historically flat personal saving rate (once realised capital gains are included) means that households are, in essence, treating such gains as a perfect substitute for disposable income.
South Korea is the big exception: households have as much debt relative to their income as Americans and their saving rate has fallen over the past decade from 18% of disposable income to only 4%.
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This means that there is plenty of scope for a rapid rise in consumption, if only households can become confident enough to lower their saving rate to the 12% level of the early 1990s and use up some of their past savings.
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America's total saving rate fell in the third quarter of last year to only 10% of GDP, barely half its level a decade ago.
It also renders conventional monetary policy impotent, as the interest rate that prevents too much saving is below zero.
Because the government is a major provider of health care, slowing the growth rate of health care costs would lower the deficit and thus raise public saving.
This spending has driven our national saving rate from 14 percent in the fifties to 1 percent now.
After falling steeply in the late 1990s, China's household saving rate has been more or less steady since 2000 (see chart 9).
The Lib Dems, who want to lower the basic rate of income tax, said the plans would only result in a marginal saving for people on average incomes.
Refinancing applications jumped 30 percent last week, to more than double the rate we had last fall, saving the average homeowner hundreds of dollars a month -- the equivalent of a generous tax cut.
Since the old, who have shorter time horizons, have larger propensities to consume than do the young, this transfer has fueled a huge increase in personal consumption, reducing our national saving rate (saving as a share of national income) from 10 to 15% in the 1950s and 60s to a negative 1.5% last year.
Mr Gourinchas doubts that depressing the exchange rate could sustain a high rate of saving for long.
Workers are defaulted into a commitment to increase their saving rate later, thus putting off the pain of having less cash to spend.
And you can do a lot of creative math and come up with an outcome that supports a particular editorial point of view, but the fact is the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has confirmed that the Recovery Act delivered as promised, lowering the unemployment rate by as much as 2 percent, boosting the GDP significantly, and creating and saving as many as 3.6 million jobs.
But although households account for a large part of China's exalted national saving rate, they were not responsible for the sharp rise in national thrift since 2000.
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