Hal Varian, Chief Economist at Google and author of our beloved Intermediate Microeconomics
“Well, the savings rate is up. People had a negative savings rate for several years and now it’s more like 7 percent. In some sense, that’s a good thing, I know people are complaining about it but you have to restore some reasonable balance. Maybe it’s not so good that we had to get to it by going through this recession, but at least we’re coming out at a more balanced rate than we were going in.” (emphasis mine)
Europe, in contrast, has had a savings rate of around 20% (depending on your source) since the year 2000. Maybe another indicator why the US are finding it comparatively harder to cope in times like these. And also yet another indicator for a a level playing field
