Dr. Constantin Gurdgiev:

Very much so. I will elaborate a little bit. One has the income declines on the household side, sometimes through the wages, sometimes through unemployment and sometimes the aggregate income has declined across the whole economy as well, and sometimes all three together. One has precautionary savings motive, which is very strong in that people are saving anything that they can, even people with jobs are still saving. In addition, one has the sectoral stagnation. One has the demographic effect in addition to the other effects of the sectoral stagnation.

Ireland is a great example and laboratory of that. We have in addition to it the wealth effect. By destroying vast amounts of paper wealth, imaginary wealth we used to hold in our homes, we destroyed the security of the entire generation in terms of their pensions. As a result of that, what does one expect them to go and buy? They are going to save and they are going to try to find any outlet to safely save for the future.