Sure, since the Chinese government keeps down the exchange rate they can produce more than they consume, and by not giving universal healthcare to the poor farmers these are forced (because they are sensible) to put away their surplus for when someone in the family becomes sick and thus save more than they would otherwise.
But generally it is still the people who decide what to do. E.g. middle class Americans who re-mortgaged to buy big cars (or at least used to). Sure, Fannie and Freddie bought those bad mortgages and the US government guaranteed them, but no one was forced to go that way!
Of course, that only directly applies to individuals. How corporations decide whether to invest or not is another issue which is also driven by many factors, e.g. are many companies listed on the stock exchange and need to deliver "growth stories" to analysts (i.e. invest, i.e. spend more than they earn) or are they conservative like the family-owned Mittelstand in Germany.
That is only possible with a positive trade balance. The fact that if everyone (and I mean everyone) tries to save, then everyone's income drops to the point that they're no longer saving is Keynes' paradox of thrift. For example,
Thus the old-fashioned view that saving always involves investment, though incomplete and misleading, is formally sounder than the new-fangled view that there can be saving without investment or investment without 'genuine' saving. The error lies in proceeding to the plausible inference that, when an individual saves, he will increase aggregate investment by an equal amount. It is true, that, when an individual saves he increases his own wealth. But the conclusion that he also increases aggregate wealth fails to allow for the possibility that an act of individual saving may react on someone else's savings and hence on someone else's wealth. The reconciliation of the identity between saving and investment with the apparent 'free-will' of the individual to save what he chooses irrespective of what he or others may be investing, essentially depends on saving being, like spending, a two-sided affair. For although the amount of his own saving is unlikely to have any significant influence on his own income, the reactions of the amount of his consumption on the incomes of others makes it impossible for all individuals simultaneously to save any given sums. Every such attempt to save more by reducing consumption will so affect incomes that the attempt necessarily defeats itself. It is, of course, just as impossible for the community as a whole to save less than the amount of current investment, since the attempt to do so will necessarily raise incomes to a level at which the sums which individuals choose to save add up to a figure exactly equal to the amount of investment. The above is closely analogous with the proposition which harmonises the liberty, which every individual possesses, to change, whenever he chooses, the amount of money he holds, with the necessity for the total amount of money, which individual balances add up to, to be exactly equal to the amount of cash which the banking system has created. In this latter case the equality is brought about by the fact that the amount of money which people choose to hold is not independent of their incomes or of the prices of the things (primarily securities), the purchase of which is the natural alternative to holding money. Thus incomes and such prices necessarily change until the aggregate of the amounts of money which individuals choose to hold at the new level of incomes and prices thus brought about has come to equality with the amount of money created by the banking system. This, indeed, is the fundamental proposition of monetary theory.
The reconciliation of the identity between saving and investment with the apparent 'free-will' of the individual to save what he chooses irrespective of what he or others may be investing, essentially depends on saving being, like spending, a two-sided affair. For although the amount of his own saving is unlikely to have any significant influence on his own income, the reactions of the amount of his consumption on the incomes of others makes it impossible for all individuals simultaneously to save any given sums. Every such attempt to save more by reducing consumption will so affect incomes that the attempt necessarily defeats itself. It is, of course, just as impossible for the community as a whole to save less than the amount of current investment, since the attempt to do so will necessarily raise incomes to a level at which the sums which individuals choose to save add up to a figure exactly equal to the amount of investment.
The above is closely analogous with the proposition which harmonises the liberty, which every individual possesses, to change, whenever he chooses, the amount of money he holds, with the necessity for the total amount of money, which individual balances add up to, to be exactly equal to the amount of cash which the banking system has created. In this latter case the equality is brought about by the fact that the amount of money which people choose to hold is not independent of their incomes or of the prices of the things (primarily securities), the purchase of which is the natural alternative to holding money. Thus incomes and such prices necessarily change until the aggregate of the amounts of money which individuals choose to hold at the new level of incomes and prices thus brought about has come to equality with the amount of money created by the banking system. This, indeed, is the fundamental proposition of monetary theory.
But let's take the case of Greece again. I happen to think that because Greece is undiversified with shipping and tourism contributing over 50% to GDP, that Greece should always run a surplus. Shipping and tourism tank in a recession, but in good times, these services are actual quite useful because they are the source of external funds. The problem with Greece, however, is not overspending. The salaries committed to the bloated public sector are still half the EU average and they are higher than the average salary in the private sector. As for private debt, the Greek number is below 40% to GDP so Greeks actually are not borrowing money on a personal level to consume. I'm assuming the average household is not in great debt.
What it all boils down to is that you have a poor country with a huge amount of people on welfare. I am not going to dismiss neoliberal arguments that Greeks would be better served with a more entrepreneurial spirit if the public sector was slashed. That seems plain on its face. But ultimately the argument about becoming better savers on a personal level is not going to help Greeks. They are a country in need of either new streams of wealth creation, or else a better policy for distributing the wealth created in already existing business sectors.
I tend to think they need to focus on the latter because the tension between the various classes of workers within Greek society is sapping the country's moral will. They need to get straight on policy and regulation and only then can they move on to wealth creation.
Then again, I live in the USA and the same tensions exist here, where the lower middle class are the bulwark behind the GOP, and paradoxically the more educated middle and upper middle class trends to the Democrats and doesn't mind sharing their wealth through taxes. Clearly, Americans are rowing the boat in opposite directions.
