Try this on for size: 
     if you simply "promote savings", then what happens to the 
interest rate?  (30 seconds, time is up)  Um uh gee -- It FALLS. 
     now, that is supposed to "encourage" investment.  BUT at best 
what it does is encouraging borrowing.  Borrowing for WHAT?  
Hey, the choice of the borrower, right? 
     OKAY. 
     In a healthy functioning economy, what happens is that 
innovators see opportunities that others don't.  They anticipate 
high returns on those opportunities (until everyone else catches 
on).  THAT MEANS they are willing to pay a higher-than-average 
return on borrowed funds.   
     The higher-than-average returns attracts the would-be 
investor.   
     The investor is not a person but an institution engaged in 
financial intermediation. 
     That institution is willing to pay, in turn, higher rates of 
return on funds from constituents. 
     The higher rates of return translate into higher interest rates 
which then should have an impact on the idnividual back there thinking 
about "Hmmmm, save or consume, save or consume, what to do?"  (Note 
the word "should" -- there are lots of glitches that can boggle up 
this whole process, yes?) 
     SO.  An obsession with promoting saving as a more "pure" form of 
economic activity than consumption can backfire on you.  Because it isnot 
saving that you really want to be promoting.  It is innovation.  And 
placing too much emphasis on saving (taking funds away that might have 
been used to purchase that new innovation ...) is no more or less an 
imbalance than any other sorts of interventions in the process.   
     But it plays well in Washington.   
     -- Mary Schweitzer