Who would've thought that a few thousand bucks in stimulus payments and several pocketed paychecks wouldn't last forever?
Americans will likely deplete the rest of the excess savings they accumulated during the pandemic this quarter, according to a new study from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
After rapidly accumulating "unprecedented" levels of excess savings during the pandemic, the San Francisco Fed estimates American households held less than $190 billion in aggregate excess savings as of June.
That $190 billion figure may seem big. But it's down from $2.1 trillion in August of 2021.
Where did all that money come from? Presumably it arose from people, well, not doing anything — no restaurants, no movie theaters, no entertainment venues. All that money that would've normally gone to normal consumer expenditures went into bank accounts instead.
So then where did it go? Presumably it got withdrawn to cover the insane levels of inflation and spiraling prices that have wracked the U.S. economy for the last couple of years. An unstated recession will do that.
The Federal Reserve said that, if current drawdowns continue, excess savings "will likely be depleted in the third quarter of 2023."
Hold onto your dollars if you can, folks, we'll probably need them soon.
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