
What savers do with $2.4 trillion will define the recovery
CNN
Wall Street is expecting the economy to come roaring back to life in the second half of this year. But there's one crucial question: Are Americans ready to spend the savings they've stashed away during the pandemic?
What's happening: In a note to clients this week, Goldman Sachs strategists estimated that Americans are sitting on $1.5 trillion in "excess" or "forced" savings. They forecast that figure will climb to $2.4 trillion, or almost the size of India's annual GDP, "by the time that normal economic life is restored around mid-year."
Global stock markets have largely shrugged off President Donald Trump’s renewed tariff campaign. In commodities markets, however, tariff threats have sent the price of copper soaring to all-time highs — signaling the potential for higher tariff-induced prices for a metal with critical uses across the US economy.

This past April, when President Donald Trump started flirting with the notion of firing Fed Chair Jerome Powell, stocks and the dollar tumbled because investors worried that even talking about such a move crossed a red line. You can’t even joke about that, the Wall Street intellectuals told us — the central bank’s independence is simply too important.