One Bank Brings You The ‘Word From Main Street’, And The Word Is…

Guess what? Well, I’ll tell you. BofAML is launching a new survey of US consumers called “Word From Main Street”.

Apparently, Wall Street needs to conduct surveys to get a read on what the “word” from Main Street is, because after all, if you’re working in lower Manhattan and pulling in a cool 300k, you’re probably not spending a lot of time hanging out with the poors in social settings.

So what they’re going to do with these surveys is “ask questions on current conditions and expectations for the economy as well as more focused questions on housing, labor market and financial conditions.” That sounds fun!

Much like some of the surveys they conduct on non-poors, they’re including a “special” question each month and this month, that “special” question is this:

What will you do with the additional income from the tax cuts?

Naturally, Wall Street figured Main Street would be spending that extra money.

Well surprise!

“In our outlook, we had assumed that about a third of the tax windfall would be spent, but the results of our survey suggest that this may have been too optimistic,” BofAML laments, before showing you the following chart which suggests that only ~16% of people plan to spend their cash:

As you can see, roughly half of respondents said they’ll be using any extra money they get to pay down debt and/or save, which doesn’t bode particularly well for an economy that depends on consumer spending.

When you break the numbers down, you find that Millennials are more inclined to save and/or invest and/or pay down debt with their tax savings than Gen Xers, which is either a testament to a level of financial responsibility not normally ascribed to Millennials or else just an indication that they are either poor, hankerin’ to plow some cash into Bitcoin, or laboring under student loans, respectively.

Meanwhile, BofAML notes that “workers are not overly optimistic about prospects for wage growth in the near term [as] roughly 71% and 65% of full time and part time workers responding, respectively, reported that they either expect a modest increase (1-3% yoy) or little change (<1%) while only 24% and 33%, respectively, expect an increase greater than 3%.”

And finally, for all the rich folks out there, don’t worry, because the poors are still feeling pretty downtrodden with less than a third of those with under $50k in annual household income reporting an improved personal financial situation over the last year:

For those folks (i.e. for people making less than $50k), I know just who can fix this problem! There’s the President, who knows all about the trials and tribulations of the working class:

Or if you don’t like that, well then maybe elect former Goldman banker and failed Hollywood screenwriter Steve Bannon, whose populist credentials include being worth an estimated $48 fucking million: