And in the mean time, personal savings absolutely plummeted.

What we're seeing is an uptake in the savings rate.

Savings bonds.

They're savings bonds.

Do you know what this was right here?

It's not just numbers on a piece of paper.

A 1 0 U.S. Savings Bond.

This is something I call the 50 20 paradox.

What's this building?

Save your dollars bills, yo!

let's look back at that OECD graph that we were talking about.

He's given a control that allows him to adjust his savings rate.

So we're starting to pay for things with money that we have.

So this is a timely problem.

And what I'm going to talk about today is Save More Tomorrow.

It's not even sustainable economically.

And slowly, slowly we're bringing it up to a moderate savings rate.

Holding down the right flank of the OECD, all the way on the other side, is Greece.

There was nothing to buy, unless you wanted to buy some rivets. Right?

Because I kind of view that as a reference point.

Until we get to this point right here, where everything starts blowing up.

Let me just put it into my mattress.

Well, think about smoking, for example.

I still have some money saved! I'm prepared for hard times.

Then I'm gonna deposit the rest in a money market account.

Keep something for a rainy day.

You'd rent a smaller home.

Where maybe I saved 5, but someone else borrowed 5.

In an emergency you can fall back on your savings.

Put by money for the future.

I don't dividend it out to the shareholders. I just keep that.

In an emergency you can fall back on your savings.

It should be noted, of course, that the United States and the U.K. are the next in line.

And because I care, I'm putting it all away for you. Just like storing nuts for the winter.

Now even after all of this granular level of control, do futureless language speakers seem to save more?

But it improves our standard of living and the goal of all countries is really to improve that average standard of living.

Now I'm going to describe to you a study I did with Gur Huberman, Emir Kamenica, Wei Jang where we looked at the retirement savings decisions of nearly a million Americans from about 650 plans all in the U.S.

It will pay you to save a part of your salary each month.

But the remainder is savings.

Pulling money out of the house as fast as they could, putting money on credit cards as fast as they could.

But there's another group of people who were more than offsetting that by taking credit.

What is the average difference here?

What about the remaining half of the people?

Now all of a sudden, the credit crisis hit and all this credit disappears.

Both my nine and seven year olds have a stock broker already.