> Domestic saving is in no way equivalent to productive investment in the US economy. Are people keeping money in their mattress considered accounting discrepan

> Domestic saving is in no way equivalent to productive investment in the US economy. Are people keeping money in their mattress considered accounting discrepancies? Companies hoard cash like dragons. What investment in USA? Have you seen much new equipment or new factories? What investment means here is pumping up USA asset prices, it stretches the definition of the word investment to the absolute limit. Domestic saving just ends up as unused savings in an account somewhere, we don't have a good mechanism to put it to actual productive use. This is completely nonsensical. Banks (eliding a lot of important details about money and loan creation) use money in those accounts to make loans, and a large percentage of those loans are used for investing in businesses and real estate. "Pumping up USA asset prices", I assume means "buying stocks", which also leads to investment by the companies who sold those stocks. Companies that "hoard cash" don't literally have piles of dollar bills somewhere. Apple, for example has billions of dollars of "cash on hand", but a large percentage of that is actually in bonds and other liquid assets that are investments, and not actually just a useless hoard. They keep pure "cash equivalents" on hand mostly for operations purposes. > Funds from abroad don't finance business investment in USA. They are foreign funds snapping up American real estate and other hard assets. This is literally what investing is. Where do you think that money goes? To the people who built those buildings and other assets. Do you think they just light the money on fire? No, they build more buildings and other assets to sell to foreign investors. And they are still productive assets in the US, with different ownership.