Moreover, the absence of a social safety net in China creates a strong incentive for Chinese consumers to save rather than spend. Is the Norwegian economy also at a turning point? Household saving has also been low in Norway in recent years and corporate earnings have been offset by high investments. Excluding government financial and oil sector surpluses – which are redeployed abroad – Norway recorded a current account deficit of an estimated NOK 150 billion in 2007, or close to 10 per cent of mainland GDP. The corollary to the deficit on the basic balance is that Norwegian businesses, as well as Norwegian banks, borrow in foreign markets. It is the interaction between high household credit demand and an ample supply of credit that has resulted in low saving and large deficits. The banks now have to put more effort into procuring deposits and a little less into selling loans. Such a change in banks' behaviour may contribute to curbing growth in demand and output in the period ahead. There are now signs of a cooling housing market throughout the country. House price inflation peaked about a year ago when the housing market was marked by euphoria. Several large residential construction projects are now being shelved. Should weaker developments in the US lead to a broad-based pause in global growth, there may be various repercussions for the Norwegian economy: First, a downturn in the world economy may adversely affect activity and profitability in export industries and perhaps even the oil sector.
The search for yield and market shares may at times become too intense. A common feature of financial crises is that they are accompanied by considerable changes in the pricing of risk in many markets. Prices for equities and other securities are determined by economic agents’ income expectations. On occasion, these expectations turn out to be unrealistic. Unexpected events can change the economic outlook. When confidence and optimism shift to fear and uncertainty – and this can happen overnight – prices can rapidly plummet. The current turbulence has deep roots. US household saving fell markedly in the 1990s. When the dotcom bubble burst after the turn of the millennium, the Federal Reserve cut its key rate to low levels. Interest rates in Europe also showed a considerable decline. House prices and investment in real property then rose sharply through most of the Western world, and saving in the US and other Western countries showed a renewed fall. Low government and personal saving in the US has given rise to large trade deficits. The saving of the rest of the world is financing the US deficit. In isolation, such a large supply of  2  BIS Review 18/2008  capital would have pushed up interest rates. But even though the US increasingly had to rely on foreign financing, long-term interest rates fell. At the same time inflation remained low, partly thanks to cheap Asian imported goods.