Solution for American is Fasten belt and start saving

The U.S. may be on its way to becoming a nation of savers, whether Americans like it or not. With home and stock prices declining and credit hard to come by, consumers who have fallen out of the savings habit are being forced to curb borrowing and rein in spending.

That is bad news for companies catering to them, which will have to retrench as well. Detroit automakers may need to slash costs and merge as Americans hold onto their cars longer. Shopping malls might be forced to shut as retail traffic trails off. Hotels may have to shelve expansion plans as vacationers become stingier with their dollars.

The big concern is that households, spooked by the turmoil in financial markets, will cut back rapidly and sharply, plunging companies into bankruptcy and deepening a recession that many economists say has already begun.

If American did have a quick cut in spending, it could turn a pretty nasty recession into possibly the worst downturn we've seen in the postwar period,'' says Michael Feroli, a former Federal Reserve official now at JPMorgan Chase & Co. in New York. Even without a collapse of consumer spending, Feroli expects the economy to contract by 2 percent in both this quarter and the next.

There are signs that consumer spending is already giving way. U.S. retail sales fell in September for the third straight month, the longest slump since the government began keeping records in 1992. And consumer confidence fell by the most on record this month. Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke.

Any industry that is tied to the consumer will have to downsize and consolidate.

From 1960 until 1990, households socked away an average of about 9 percent of their after-tax income, Commerce Department figures show. But Americans got out of the saving habit starting in the 1990s as they saw their wealth build up in other ways, first through surging stock prices and later through soaring home values.

Meantime, looser credit standards made it easier for people to afford major purchases without having to save up to pay for them. The result: Since 1990, they have set aside less and spent more, pushing the savings rate down to an average of 3.5 percent. It was less than 1 percent in each of the last three years.

That may be about to change as wealth and credit evaporate. Household net worth, as measured by the Fed, fell $2 trillion in the second quarter from a year earlier and that was before the stock market's nosedive wiped about $3.9 trillion off investors' portfolios in the past month and a half.

Credit is also harder to get. Borrowing by U.S. consumers fell in August by $7.9 billion, the most since statistics began in 1943, to $2.58 trillion as lenders curbed access to loans.

Add to that a cyclical rise in the unemployment rate it already stands at a five-year high of 6.1 percent and could increase to 9 percent.

Consumers are starting to realize that they've been living in a fantasy world. They will have to begin salting away money for retirement, their children's education and other reasons.

Americans have a way to go to catch up with their counterparts in other countries. The 0.4 percent of disposable income that U.S. households saved last year compares with 10.9 percent for Germany and 3.1 percent for Japan.

In the long run, higher savings would be good news for the U.S. economy, because the extra money would help put household finances on a sounder footing and lessen U.S. dependence on investment by China and other foreign countries to finance economic growth.

In the shorter run, though, it will likely mean wrenching changes for companies that have become reliant on rapidly growing consumer spending. Some firms have already begun cutting back to bring operations in line with lower demand.

Companies built up a lot of capacity. They may not need all of it.

The construction industry has been decimated by the collapse of the housing market. At least a dozen homebuilders have sought bankruptcy protection as conditions deteriorated, including billionaire Carl Icahn's WCI Communities Inc., Tousa Inc., Kimball Hill Inc., Levitt & Sons and Neumann Homes Inc.

Automakers are also hurting, especially Detroit's Big Three: General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler LLC. U.S. car and truck sales this month may fall to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 11 million, the lowest in at least 25 years, Deutsche Bank AG analyst Rod Lache wrote in an Oct. 14 note to clients. That compares with a 14.1 million average through the first nine months of this year and a 16.7 million average from 2002 through 2007.

The industry needs desperately a dramatic rationalization; there are too many plants, too many employees. It will be a radical change: far fewer suppliers, possibly not three U.S. companies, maybe three that become two or one. (Bloomberg)