Dr. Mike Walden, North Carolina Cooperative Extension economist in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at N.C. State University, responds:

"Many economists think this is a permanent change for two big reasons. First of all, the drop in household wealth that we have seen during this recession has been unprecedented since the 1930s. In fact, we've never seen as big a drop in household wealth since detailed data have been kept on this factor, since the early 1950s. We've lost right now $13 trillion in wealth, about 20 percent of all wealth held by households. So this is a big blow, and it's going to take households a long time to recover it. And they way they recover it is to save more. So I think there's going to be a constant motivation by households in coming years to save more money. Now on the other side of the ledger - lenders. I think lenders have been criticized recently for having higher standards to loan money. I think they're going to keep those standards high. They've also obviously been hit hard by this recession. They know the hit households have taken, so I think it's actually going to be tougher for households to borrow money. So I think on the one hand you have this motivation to save; on the other hand, you make it more difficult for people to borrow. I think that's going to combine to really change the landscape for savings. Saving will be 'in' over the next couple of decades."