{"id":4300,"date":"2011-05-27T07:03:12","date_gmt":"2011-05-27T13:03:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jasonapollovoss.local\/?p=4300"},"modified":"2018-09-21T02:06:14","modified_gmt":"2018-09-21T06:06:14","slug":"consumer-spending-is-slowing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/2011\/05\/27\/consumer-spending-is-slowing\/","title":{"rendered":"Consumer Spending is Slowing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">U.S. Department of Commerce figures for the month of April show that consumer spending is slowing.\u00a0 Specifically, consumer spending rose 0.4% relative to March.\u00a0 Consensus expectations from economists were for a rise of 0.5%.\u00a0 If you adjust the data by inflation then spending only rose 0.1%.\u00a0 Meanwhile, consumer incomes rose 0.4% &#8211; exactly matching the expectations.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\"><strong>Analysis:<\/strong> The above data are being explained by commentators as the result of rising commodity prices (like food and gasoline) putting a damper on spending.\u00a0 Whatever the reason, in a consumer driven economy (70% of GDP) you must have consumer buying in order for the economy to grow.\u00a0 That spending only expanded 0.1% once adjusted for inflation indicates that the second quarter economic growth is not off to a good start.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">All of that said, the good news is that consumer incomes expanded at the same pace as spending.\u00a0 That means that the budgetary impact of higher commodity prices is met by increases in income.\u00a0 Yet, economic growth requires consumers having unspent economic ammunition in their budgetary arsenal.\u00a0 By definition, growth means that more money is spent than before.\u00a0 Unless of course consumers begin spending more than they earn using debt.\u00a0 Frankly, long-term, that is a disaster scenario.\u00a0 The country has to live within its means at the consumer, business and federal levels.\u00a0 Duh!<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\"><strong>Importance grade:<\/strong> 6; we have had two consecutive months of slowing consumer spending.\u00a0 In March I felt that the slowdown was due to all of the bad news taking place globally: Middle Eastern revolutions and Japanese tsunami overwhelm.\u00a0 In April the attribution is more difficult.\u00a0 I don&#8217;t consider two months of slowing, <em>yet still positive<\/em>, consumer spending numbers to be a cause for alarm; but a cause for taking notice.\u00a0 If May&#8217;s consumer spending numbers prove to be a continuance then it will be worth more of our attention.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">Jason<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>U.S. Department of Commerce figures for the month of April show that consumer spending is slowing.\u00a0 Specifically, consumer spending rose 0.4% relative to March.\u00a0 Consensus expectations from economists were for a rise of 0.5%.\u00a0 If you adjust the data by inflation then spending only rose 0.1%.\u00a0 Meanwhile, consumer incomes rose 0.4% &#8211; exactly matching the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4300"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4300\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}