TW: I remain highly skeptical about the economy and the markets. Recall personal consumption exceeds 70% of the total economy, if it is declining 5%ish then the recession will continue.
In addition to being concerned about the markets I am very concerned that the political environment will get extremely difficult if the economy continues to splutter and perhaps locks up again over the winter. We cannot seem to get any rational governance now, what would happen in that circumstance I do not even want to contemplate.
From Floyd Norris at NYT:
A good measure of retail sales growth, or lack thereof, is total retail sales less spending at gasoline stations. Here are the year-over-year figures for that measure, starting last September, the month the economy started to plunge.
September, 2008, -4.3%
October, -6.6%
November, -7.5%
December, -8.7%
January, 2009, -7.0%
February, -6.3%
March, -7.6%
April, -8.0%
May, -7.7%
June, -6.8%
July, -5.9%
You can take encouragement from that, if you want to do so. The year-over-year decline is the smallest since September. But it turns out that all of that improvement comes from a modest increase in auto sales, caused by the “cash-for-clunkers” program..."
http://norris.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/consumers-arent-spending/
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