“Around the time Nixon was pulling the plug on what remained of the gold standard, the personal savings rate in America was north of 12.5%. These days, it’s 5.4%, and that’s up from 2.2% in the boom year of 2005. The 2008 crash tightened people’s belts. However, prudence is not bursting out all over. The WSJ says the personal savings rate has increased ‘in large part because it counts reductions in personal debt, such as mortgages and credit-card balances, as savings’, but that most debt reduction has been driven by defaults, rather than paying back. It’s clear that since the last tethers tying the dollar to gold were cut, money production has soared, and a casualty has been the savings ethic.”
http://www.caseyresearch.com/articles/the-fed-strangling-the-saving-ethic-and-values