Influx

Dave over at ETF Digest (a required read for planners) posted an interesting chart yesterday that shows how the correlation between consumer confidence and spending, that had been so reliable, has broken apart. The logical assumption obviously being that the less confidence consumers had in the...

If you look at the data on credit, it's clear there's a massive shift underway. Consumers have become fanatical about cutting back on debt. October credit fell by $3.5 billion (-1.7% year over year). September's decline was dramatic, $8.7 billion. October marked the ninth month of declines, a trend...

From this week's New Yorker."As people try to rebuild their nest eggs, the savings rate is bound to remain higher than it was a few years ago. And what we spend our money on will change, too; housing costs, which were the central cause of the rise in Americans’ indebtedness in recent years,...

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...

According to some polls, the crisis on Wall Street is having a significant impact on overall consumer confidence with obvious implications for spending in Q4. Obviously, it's more than just Wall Street, but, it clearly isn't helping an already nervous nation.IPSOS- September 19th..- 60% of...