The Economist begins a series of articles on the global saving glut, global investment deficit, excess liquidity, and slow expected world growth hypotheses for the persistence of low long-term interest rates, with an emphasis on world saving patterns. This introductory piece asks whether Ben Bernanke, who can be assigned responsibility for both monetary and fiscal policy, was correct to deflect criticism over the current account deficit away from U.S. policymakers. It concludes that the U.S. must shoulder more responsibility for global imbalances than Bernanke's global saving glut hypothesis allows. The paper also concludes that rebalancing will take time and invlolve risks to the world economy. The second figure showing the shift in saving from the household to the business sector in recent years is noteworthy, though the chart shows this is not the first time household saving has dropped and corporate saving has risen since 1980:

The great thrift shift, by Zanny Minton Beddoes, The Economist : On March 10th 2005, Ben Bernanke ... argued ... the world might be suffering from a “global saving glut”. The phrase immediately caught on. ... The idea's appeal lies in the way it ties together two of the most vexing questions about today's economic landscape: why are interest rates so low? And why can America borrow eye-popping amounts from foreigners with seeming impunity? ... A “global saving glut” could explain both oddities. ... His suggestion that the causes of global imbalances lie elsewhere conveniently deflects attention from monetary and fiscal decisions ... It suggests that Mr Greenspan's loose monetary policy and George Bush's tax cuts are not responsible for the imbalances in the world economy. That may seem a little self-serving, coming from a man who has subsequently moved from the Federal Reserve to become chairman of Mr Bush's Council of Economic Advisers.

Taken at face value, the notion of a global saving glut is not borne out by the facts. “Glut” suggests an unusually large amount, as in a summer glut of strawberries. In fact, figures published in the IMF's latest World Economic Outlook show that the rate of global saving as a proportion of global output, measured at market exchange rates, has mostly been heading downhill over the past 30 years, with a particularly steep plunge between 2000 and 2002 (see chart 1)...

But Mr Bernanke's argument is more subtle. He is saying that low interest rates imply too much saving relative to the amount people want to invest, and that the ... discrepancy is concentrated outside America. ... [E]ven with the saving rate falling, there could be a glut of thrift if ... the demand for investment ... was falling even faster. The important factors in the equation, therefore, are shifts in the appetite for investment as well as in the geography of thrift. On both counts the world has seen big changes. Traditionally, most of the saving ... is done by households, whereas most of the investing tends to be done by firms. But in the past few years firms have become net savers as their profits have exceeded their investments. That change has been most pronounced and long-lasting in Japan, where corporate saving soared after the bubble economy collapsed in the early 1990s. Burdened with bad debts ..., Japanese firms have been net savers for a decade. The late 1990s saw a similar shift in many emerging Asian economies, where corporate investment plunged after the Asian financial crisis. After the stockmarket bubble burst in 2000, American and European firms' investment also fell. Although American firms began investing again a couple of years ago, the level of corporate investment is still relatively low, given how strongly the economy—and profits—have been growing. Firms in industrial countries as a whole are still saving more than they invest, despite record profits (see chart 2). The only significant country bucking the trend is China, where investment has been rising sharply. But saving has been growing faster still.