[Bookie]

Actually, it would be amusing to watch the financial community's response to an outbreak of frugality on a national scale. it would be interpreted as a decliine in the consumer confidence index and a harbinger of recession. Share prices would fall as projected earnings estimates were trimmed quarter by quarter. Unemployment would rise with payroll trimming to reduce costs. Tax receipts would decline across the board, squeezing local and state governments that look to sales tax revenues.

Distress selling at every level would bring prices down, but consumers would delay major purchases in anticipation of further price cuts. The Fed would cut rates to encourage borrowing at every level. Frugal consumers would penalize savings institutions that followed suit by shifting balances in search of higher returns, thus putting pressure on the banking industry already facing mounting debt liquidation and idle reserves.

Trading pardners abroad would panic as American imports fell, wiping out markets on which they had built their hopes. Loan defaults around the globe would trigger financial panic. Billions in inflated asset values would simply disappear in a deflationary spiral.

Interesting to contemplate.