Our current economic downturn was characterized by a sudden and severe drop in Americans’ consumption spending relative to their disposable income. The shift in the Bureau of Economic Analysis numbers was pretty dramatic, as this graph (not adjusted for inflation) shows. Americans quite suddenly shifted their personal consumption expenditures (PCE) downward relative to their disposable income (DPI) in order to weather the downturn, as the widened and persistent gap between the two lines on this graph demonstrates.