“Household deleveraging is clearing the decks for better consumer spending going forward,” said Mr. Zandi. Still, some economists note that many consumers are reaching into savings to finance spending, suggesting consumption could run out of fuel.

“Look at employment and income,” said Brian Bethune, chief United States financial economist at the economic analysis firm, IHS Global Insight. “It’s glacial. If we don’t get strong growth in employment and income, we’re really just building this up as a house of cards.”

The American savings rate climbed during the recession but has recently fallen. Among households in the top fifth of American incomes — those earning $98,000 a year and up — the savings rate dropped to 2 percent of income in the first half of 2007 and then spiked above 14 percent by the middle of 2008, according to an analysis of Federal Reserve data by Economy.com. By the end of last year, the savings rate of this group had slipped back to 3.5 percent.

Since the end of World War II, the first year after a recession tends to feature growth at roughly twice the pace of the decline during the downturn, implying a current pace exceeding 7 percent. Yet even optimistic economists assume the economy is growing at perhaps half that rate.

“I keep calling it a half-speed recovery, not the full-speed-ahead recovery that we typically get after deep, prolonged recessions,” said Stuart Hoffman, chief economist at PNC Financial Services Group in Pittsburgh.

But at a Porsche dealership in downtown Los Angeles, the sales manager, Victor Ghassemi, has seen sales rise by about 5 percent in recent weeks, a trend he attributes to rising stock portfolios.

“People get tired of holding on to their money, or just sitting at home and not doing anything,” he said. “People love to shop. And you take that privilege away from somebody, it lasts about a year. Eventually, people want to come back. They want to buy new merchandise, a new product, to make them feel really good about themselves.”