Daily Archives: 2012/05/15

Can anyone tell me what a 1 tenth of 1 percent consumer spending increase last month means to our economy. Let me help you. It is just one more indication of how bad things really are. Again, we must go inside the numbers and extract the real trouble. Not only is this figure anemic in terms of the actual confidence of consumers in a “recovery”, or the likelihood they will actually go out and continue to buy stuff, but the larger picture shows Americans have done about all the spending they are likely to do for quite a while. They have taken advantage of artificially low interest rates used as bait to entice them into financing that new car, and they have once again run up those nasty credit cards to stock up on all those gadgets that will get them through the tough times ahead. Regrettably, I am hearing more and more folks expressing a fatalistic attitude about the possibility things will get better anyway…

Consumer spending is just one of what I like to call the structural numbers which gauge how people view our current economic climate. And for good or bad, these numbers continue to show we are less than confident about even the short-term future of our country. “My fear” remains rooted in the catch phrases, idioms and words I’m hearing much more frequently these days, (new norm, class warfare, Obamanomics, and the new America), all suggesting we must accept a diminished or as some would have us believe, a “more realistic American Dream”.

This next election will say much about whether “We the People” feel America’s best days are behind her.