"Anything that we can do to raise personal savings is very much in the interest of this country"
About this Quote
Greenspan’s sentence reads like civic hygiene: save more, and the nation benefits. That tidy moral framing is the tell. It’s technocratic persuasion posing as common sense, aimed at turning a contested economic agenda into a neutral patriotic duty. The word “personal” matters: responsibility gets privatized. Structural questions - wages, housing costs, healthcare risk, the bargaining power of labor - fade behind an implicit virtue ethic of thrift.
The intent is twofold. First, it channels policy preference: higher household saving is a cheaper, less politically explosive way to boost national saving than, say, reducing deficits or redistributing income. Second, it nudges behavior without arguing directly for the policies that would force it (tight credit, restrained wage growth, weaker safety nets). “Anything that we can do” sounds inclusive, but it’s also elastic: it can justify tax-advantaged retirement accounts and financial-market deepening just as easily as it can justify cautionary messaging that keeps consumers from demanding more.
Context is the late-20th/early-21st century American obsession with consumption-led growth and recurrent anxiety about under-saving: the trade deficit, reliance on foreign capital, and the vulnerability of households one shock away from crisis. Greenspan’s Fed often celebrated the dynamism of credit and asset appreciation; this line quietly balances that story with a sermon about prudence, pre-emptively shifting blame for fragility onto individuals rather than the architecture of debt.
It works because it flatters two audiences at once: policymakers get a “national interest” rationale, and citizens get a simple, ethical script. The cynicism is in the neatness. A country isn’t a household, but this sentence invites you to feel that it is.
The intent is twofold. First, it channels policy preference: higher household saving is a cheaper, less politically explosive way to boost national saving than, say, reducing deficits or redistributing income. Second, it nudges behavior without arguing directly for the policies that would force it (tight credit, restrained wage growth, weaker safety nets). “Anything that we can do” sounds inclusive, but it’s also elastic: it can justify tax-advantaged retirement accounts and financial-market deepening just as easily as it can justify cautionary messaging that keeps consumers from demanding more.
Context is the late-20th/early-21st century American obsession with consumption-led growth and recurrent anxiety about under-saving: the trade deficit, reliance on foreign capital, and the vulnerability of households one shock away from crisis. Greenspan’s Fed often celebrated the dynamism of credit and asset appreciation; this line quietly balances that story with a sermon about prudence, pre-emptively shifting blame for fragility onto individuals rather than the architecture of debt.
It works because it flatters two audiences at once: policymakers get a “national interest” rationale, and citizens get a simple, ethical script. The cynicism is in the neatness. A country isn’t a household, but this sentence invites you to feel that it is.
Quote Details
| Topic | Saving Money |
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