Influx

The Economist’s blog offers a sobering perspective on the future of consumer spending in the US.

“If American households have been forced to debt-finance spending on
necessities, and if debt financing is unlikely to be as cheap or
available in the future as it was in the recent past, then households
will either have to find ways to reduce the costs of housing,
transportation, health care, child care, and so on, or consume less, or
work more. None of those options are likely to be comfortable.
Americans have often been described as “living beyond their means”, but
I don’t think most people realised that that unaffordable life
primarily meant unsustainable access to basic necessities.”

The suggestion is that there is unlikely to be a return to normality and for many Americans, any spending beyond the basic necessities, is going to be scrutinized and analyzed with rigor.

Posted by Ed Cotton