The important point I want to make is that, if you take the household sector as a whole, it is not buried under a mountain of debt, with high servicing costs, no assets, and no spending power. Second, the personal savings rate.
In this case, there are valid concerns that we have been underestimating savings by ignoring capital gains, particularly on investments in stocks, given the rise in the stock market. If we look at the conventional measure of personal savings, the savings rate of 3¼ per cent in the fourth quarter of 1996 is indeed low.