The Commerce Department determined that Americans spent more than they earned for the seventh straight month in November, 2005, increasing the chance that the US will have a negative savings rate for 2005 as a whole, Kevin Lansing, an economist with the Federal Reserve Bank in San Francisco, recently told the San Francisco Gate newspaper. If that happens, it would be the first time the US had a negative savings rate since the Great Depression. Although strong consumer spending has boosted the US economy in recent years, many economists say housing prices will, at best, flatten out, breaking the cycle of refinancing that has allowed consumers to borrow and spend.