Alasdair Macleod on China's saving culture

It is a savings ratio of 45% which is at the root of China’s power.  The lack of savings in America and its western alliance is their Achilles heel.

~ Alasdair Macleod, "The benefits of a saving culture," Goldmoney, January 5, 2023

Bob Rodriguez on stimulus cash: private savings vs. public dis-savings

The consumer has saved a lot of money because they've gotten all this stimulus cash. They've paid down debt. They haven't spent much more than maybe half of what they've received. This is viewed as a positive. But I say, "That's only one side of the equation." The offset is the government borrowed this money, so it results in a negative savings rate and the net effect is a system-wide savings rate that hasn't been improved. It's a very pernicious environment.

~ Bob Rodriguez, "Bob Rodriguez: We are in a Rolling Depression," by Robert Huebscher, Advisor Perspectives, September 7, 2020

Larry Fink on the Australian model of compulsory retirement accounts

Superannuation has been a huge success in supplementing the government pension scheme and taking the strain off it - an attractive prospect as we think about how to relieve the burden on Social Security in this country.  The current system is broken, and we need a comprehensive solution to retirement savings that includes some form of mandatory retirement savings.

~ Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, asset manager with nearly $4 trillion under management, from a lecture given to business school students at New York University in May, "Retirement Saving Done Right," Bloomberg BusinessWeek, June 3, 2013

Alan Greenspan on the gold standard, savings and inflation

In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation.

~ Alan Greenspan, Federal Reserve Chairman (1987-2006), in 1966

Lew Rockwell on The War on Recession

It's time that we question the very foundations of this war on recession. The recession is a regrettable but inevitable backlash against a boom that was not justified by the fundamentals.

That last phrase is the critical thing. I am not saying that the recession is the price we pay for economic growth. Boom times are fabulous times, provided that they are rooted in sound fundamentals. And what are those? Essentially it is this: the timeframe of investment must match the timeframe of society at large. If people are long-term oriented and saving money, resources become available for investment in the future. When production is completed, there are consumers to buy. But if no one is saving money and there is no sound store of capital, there are no resources to invest – unless, of course, the Fed creates that money. The money the Fed creates is wholly illusory, a fiction of investors' imaginations. It will vanish when the economy wakes up to reality.

This is an example of investment unjustified by fundamentals. What to do in that case? There must be a correction. There is nothing the Fed or the Congress can do about it. It certainly shouldn't attempt to prevent it. To attempt to prevent the correction is like turning away from the skid: it only makes it worse.

~ Lew Rockwell, "The War on Recession," LewRockwell.com, March 20, 2008