Thrifty China, Spendthrift America

As consumers stopped buying, real (inflation adjusted) interest rates should have fallen to encourage thrifty households to spend.

Private savings, as a rule, can pay the costs of treatment only for the thrifty and the well off.

By increasing inflation, the Fed would turn real interest rates seriously negative, thereby coercing thrifty households into spending instead of saving.

And now, Buiter and Sibert argue convincingly, the ECB is giving the market less scope to reward the thrifty and penalize the profligate than it should.

Genetics The thrifty gene hypothesis (also called the famine hypothesis) states that in some populations the body would be more efficient at retaining fat in times of plenty, thereby endowing greater resistance to starvation in times of food scarcity.