His piece in today’s NY Times doesn’t break any new ground, recounting as it does the plunge in the personal savings rate since the Reagan 80s. He does end, though, with a couple nice turns of phrase:
Finding the right middle ground — in which we neither hoard our way into a deep recession nor spend our way into bankruptcy — will not be easy. But it’s also not impossible. Economic mores can change.
Well into the 1940s, Americans wondered whether the hard times had really ended. They spent the next few decades behaving as if the country’s prosperity depended on their actions. They saved money, which provided the capital for the great postwar boom and also paid for their retirement. Then came the change, and many of us began to assume that prosperity was an inalienable part of life, regardless of what we did. We failed to be sufficiently afraid of the alternative. A little fear can often be a healthy thing
