So it turns out that retailers' woes aren't being caused by naughty consumers buying more cheaply on the internet - they're sticking their money in banks and paying down debts instead.

We've had a bemusing couple of weeks as the retail lobby has tried to blame its problems on consumers daring to get on the web to take advantage of our strong dollar by shopping overseas - cutting the importers and retailers out of the loop.

"How dare they!" screamed prominent retailers. "They're undermine the Australian way of life by avoiding the 10 per cent GST they should be paying. Quick, Canberra, stop them! Force those consumers to come into our shops to buy stuff instead."

For a start

Aside from an early fluff by Bill Shorten, Canberra wisely ignored the plea. For a start, the Australian Tax Office knows that trying to collect GST on internet orders of less than $1,000 would simply cost more than it would make. Secondly, there seems to be nothing like a hard figure on how much money is involved - just guesstimates that are nowhere near good enough to base policy on.

And this week, thanks to the Australian Bureau of Statistics national accounts figures, we can see that it's not the internet that is making life more difficult for retailers - it's those damned consumers decided to save money and pay down debt instead of buying yet more stuff.

(I'm waiting for prominent retailers to demand Canberra put a stop to that right now, to order citizens into the shops. Any home without a flat-screen TV in every room should have a $10,000 fine imposed; all teenagers will be required to demonstrate proof of ownership of at least five pairs of thongs; no dog shall live without a Frisbee. The possibilities are endless.)

A little more frugal

The figures showed Australians are saving nearly 10 per cent of their disposable income - the RBA interest rate warnings, attractive savings rates, high credit card rates and all those headlines about economic woes in the US and Europe have combined to encourage us to be a little more frugal.

The impact of that was further lighted by today's retail sales numbers for October - a worse-than-expected fall of 1.1 per cent seasonally adjusted with clothing, footwear and personal accessories sales down a sharp 4.6 per cent.

For retailers suffering from mercilessly high and rising rents and fondly remembering the government stimulus thrown around during the GFC, the outbreak of conservative consumerism is painful. For the Reserve Bank though, it's an absolute delight.

Behind the rate hikes

The reason the RBA has been increasing interest rates is that it would like consumers to be more subdued and save a bit more so that there is room in the economy for the expansion coming from the bulk resources boom - all the mining and gas investment plus the surge of income from our record terms of trade.

And, according to Morgan Stanley economist Gerard Minack, it also just might be an easy way out of the problem we have with expensive housing.

I don't want to buy into the "do we have a housing bubble" argument here (I've done it before and I'll happily do it again, but just for now I'll let it pass) but Minack reckons the current outbreak of saving just might deflate what I'd prefer to cause our housing affordability issue.

The healthy picture

While most headlines after Wednesday's national accounts concentrated on the low real economic growth figure for the September quarter, Minack dismissed that to concentrate on the healthy picture it painted of the way we're collectively handling this leg of the resources boom with our current account deficit down and our savings rate up. In part, this is what Minack wrote to clients;

"This is, or should be, exactly what policy-makers want to see. Higher saving is reflected in lower credit demand. And the higher saving can be used to reduce leverage, which now sits at macro-economically risky levels.

"Of course, a high saving rate also provides the household sector with firepower that it could deploy to boost spending. Saving rate changes have a big impact on growth.

The RBA's game-plan

"This is exactly what the RBA will not want to see. The RBA's game-plan is very clear. It expects sustained above trend-growth in mining-related investment and exports. With the economy already at full capacity, that implies that the rest of the economy has to grow at a below-trend rate. This is not a boom the RBA wants everyone to enjoy - certainly, not enjoy to the extent they did in 2003-08.

"The important point about this RBA strategy is that it implies below-trend growth in non-mining related sectors for as long as the mining boom continues. This is not a one- or two-quarter period of restraint. This is a strategy that implies a material reallocation of resources to mining-related activity, which will require slower demand in non-mining related sectors.

"There's a second element of the strategy that I think is important, but has not been spelt out by the Bank: this is an opportunity to deflate Australia's housing bubble. If the RBA can engineer moderate declines in nominal house prices, accompanied by saving-funded deleveraging and a trend rise in household incomes, then it may possible to return house prices to sustainable levels over the medium-term.

Bubbles usually pop

"Bubbles usually pop, not gently deflate. But there's a chance that this could occur - as, indeed, we saw in Sydney house prices, which flat-lined through the last boom. Time will tell whether gentle deflation is possible, but my sense is that the RBA will do it what can to ensure real house prices fall through the next few years."

That's not the usual simplistic pseudo-economics that our politicians generally trot out, but it is some interesting thought meat to chew upon.

It's also a mistake though to read too much into one month's or quarter's figures. Besides, the RBA has signalled that it's going to leave interest rates alone now for at least several months, perhaps allowing the consumer to regain a little more confidence. But at least we know not to blame slow traffic in the shops on the internet.