Tighter Federal Reserve policy is raising households’ interest-rate burden, leading to a rapid decline in excess savings and underscoring the likelihood hawkishness has peaked.
The pandemic rise in excess savings was probably the most rapid increase in wealth ever seen. A combination of a collapse in demand and huge government transfers led to an estimated peak of $2.3 trillion in excess savings being accumulated by the middle of 2021.
But after the feast comes the famine, and excess savings are being run down swiftly as inflation causes prices and interest rates to rise. These excess savings act as a buffer to a recession as they dampen the feedback loop of a decline in spending, leading to a fall in income, which means less spending, and so on.
