Consumer excesses and ballooning credit card debt helped cause the recession of 2008, economists said. However, Ezrati noted, the checking account balances of non-corporate accounts show none of those potential excesses.
“The last time I looked, they have checking account deposits in excess of 10 percent of their liability. And that’s a tremendous number,” he said.
Ezrati offered that some economic commentators have said this carefulness with money, along with a slow growth rate, eventually could slow the economy and lead to a recession.
He disagreed.
“The U.S. economy,” Ezrati added, “doesn’t go into recession because it stalls or is exhausted. It goes into recession because some excesses have to be worked out. And I think we can agree that there is no excess of significance in this economy.”