And in the mean time, personal savings absolutely plummeted.

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

Do you know what this was right here?

This is something I call the 50 20 paradox.

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

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

So this is a timely problem.

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?

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

Savings bonds.

What is the average difference here?

They're savings bonds.

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

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.

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

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

A 1 0 U.S. Savings Bond.

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

What's this building?

Save your dollars bills, yo!

In fact, if anything, they were borrowing against those things, especially home equity.

If you actually go to 2007, the average American consumed more than we produced.

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

When people can't borrow anymore, the savings rate has to go to 10 because most of this is just from people taking on more credit.

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

Let me just put it into my mattress.

A high household savings rate in Japan is attributed, among other things, to people's desire to save money to buy a home.

The older face is miserable.

So you essentially have forced savings.

In an emergency you can fall back on your savings.

Put by money for the future.

Because I kind of view that as a reference point.

Well, think about smoking, for example.

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

In an emergency you can fall back on your savings.

A high savings rate is cited as one factor for Japan's strong economic growth because it means the availability of abundant investment capital.

Keep something for a rainy day.

You'd rent a smaller home.

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

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