Austrians often rave about the importance of savings in economic growth. But look at a number of current big savers - Ireland, Spain, France. Pretty bad, the first two abysmal even, despite having high savings rates throughout the boom and bust years.
http://econ365.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/gross-savings-rate.pdf
These rates are for households and there does not seem to be an adjustment for govenrment interest and principal payments. These two values would reduce the savings rates for individuals.
Are you kidding me? Ireland and Spain both had government induced housing bubbles. France has a hugely restricted labour market. Those three countries all have profligate states controlling them - what does the saving of households matter if the state just keeps spending regardless?
Look at Singapore: one of the highest savings rates in the world (mandatory savings of around 35% of income), and in spite of having one of the highest PPP GDPs per capita in the world, it's still growing at around 5% per annum. Of course, the lack of a capital gains tax (and a total tax rate that is less than 15% of GDP) probably helps too.