Anyone who is willing to dismiss this report as partisan is whistling past the graveyard.
Consumer spending and attitudes toward spending are undergoing seismic shifts. You’ll be seeing a lot more of this, leading up to a peak around May 2008.
Inflation concerns are real for consumers, whether or not economists believe there is a risk, and housing ARM resets (still not peaked) coupled with decreased real estate liquidity and tightened consumer and equity credit are crunching the trend of “luxury as necessity” that was evident in consumer spending over the past 6-7 years. People are getting more conservative with spending and/or just running out of ways to dig themselves deeper holes through debt accrual.
CPI and other indices have been cooked for years; the numbers you see reported don’t often tell the half of the story with consumer spending.
IMO, the recession started earlier this year, albeit not in a classical sense. We’ll see some inverted curves that give mixed signals, but despite this the fact is that the economy is in tough shape. Really.
I agree with you completely about inflation, that the numbers have been cooked for years, but I think the peak will be in November of 2008. Just in time for the election, and we know who CNN wants to help. Hint: it’s not the conservatives.
When you hear “oh woe is us” 24/7 on the MSM, of course confidence drops. There’s no mystery. I’ve never put any stock in consumer confidence numbers. I’ve never seen any correlation between consumer confidence and economic growth.
CPI and other indices have been cooked for years; the numbers you see reported don’t often tell the half of the story with consumer spending.
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I am surprised that anyone ever believed the CPI figures. I have thought for many years that the truth is far worse than the government would admit. I can say for certain that the amount that supported my parents, myself and my three brothers fifty years ago(and I mean our total GROSS income) would not even come close to buying groceries for six people now.
Agree. We've cut back spending dramatically for a year now. Don't bother us not buying a bunch of crap we really don't need anyway. Everything is expensive, so we've just learned to conserve every way possible.
Even our driving habits have changed, we combine trips, don't waste fuel etc. Instead of eating out, we have many more home barbeque's. lol.
When not working, we stay home a lot now, so we've just made the home front more livable and deal with it. I've honestly found being cheap and frugal is fun, and I rather enjoy saving money, energy, doing our own repairs etc.