I doubt the point needed further underscoring, but just in case, the latest consumer credit data from the Fed offered more evidence to support the contention that the world’s largest economy could falter in the face of slowing consumption.
Both retail sales and personal spending data for October suggested the American consumer, while not tapped out, lost some zeal after a Q3 that witnessed the most spectacular quarterly rate of consumption ever recorded, as the economy rebounded from Q2’s historic collapse.
The Fed figures, out Monday, showed total consumer credit rose just $7.2 billion in October, less than half of the $15.5 billion economists expected.
The annual pace of growth (2.1%) was down sharply from September’s annualized rate.
Meanwhile, revolving credit contracted for a seventh month in eight. The $5.47 billion drop takes total revolving credit outstanding to a three-year low.
Again, what’s notable is that these figures cover October, when Congress was busy failing to cement a new stimulus deal, while millions of jobless Americans pondered an uncertain future both politically and economically, with no guarantee that emergency benefits would be extended.
Fast forward to December and there is still no such guarantee, although a bipartisan bill worth some $908 billion is gathering adherents, even if Mitch McConnell isn’t yet one of them.
On Monday, Chuck Schumer accused McConnell of failing to negotiate and implored Mitch to “catch up” to the moderate Republicans working on the deal.
In comments of his own, McConnell insisted that his targeted package meets the critical needs of voters and businesses. “Let’s get it done,” he said, adding that nobody should expect differences of opinion on policy to disappear overnight.
On that latter point, I’d have to agree with Mitch.
I happened to read an article on the start up of the world’s first fusion reactor. And followed that up with a query on the Chinese space program. Guess who’s number one in the world in engineering? science? education? Could military supremacy be far behind? According to the article they are planning to build a device to harness energy from the sun and send it back to earth as an energy beam? Can they do that? Gosh, what could go wrong there? And all this going on while we were distracted with Trump and his clown car. Think I’m dreaming or making this up? Look it up yourself. Puts everything else in perspective.
China landed on the moon, created the first functional (no radioactive waste) fusion reactor, and the most powerful quantum computer in the world all in the same month. Gosh, I sure do miss when WE cared about science….
What do you expect when our dear leader thinks science is for losers and suckers. Lies get you a lot more TV time.