[Excel_Wizard]

There is more money saved up than there are good productive investments available for it, in comparison to the past.

This correlates with a few things: - Inflation of the value of investment assets (high P/E ratios) - Low interest rates on bonds - Secular stagnation

[nathan_compton]

That I can believe, but it seems a bit double-speaky to call it a savings glut, right? My untutored intuition tells me that its a glut of savings in a small number of people's hands.

People who don't have a glut of savings, or even significant debt, which is a lot of people, can probably think of a lot of good uses for that money.

Assuming this sketch is accurate, the problem is too much money in the hands of too few. Not a savings glut. To call it such seems like a nakedly political way of avoiding the real issue.

[twic]

The thing that's glutted is the savings themselves - the number of dollar bills that have been scanned in and put in spreadsheets. That the spreadsheets are in the name of a small fraction of the population doesn't change the fact that there is a glut of the dollars.

[thu2111]

Can they though? What do you have in mind when you say they can think of good uses for the money?

The savings we are talking about here are really "funds looking for yield", in fact must be because Western monetary policy punishes cash saving through inflation. And finding great investments at scale is definitely hard. I doubt you know lots of people who can do it.

Bear in mind by this definition houses and corporate balances count as "savings".