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The American Consumer At A Crossroads
The rich are pretty confident in their capacity to both obtain various forms of credit and service the debt. The not-so-rich, not so much.
That was one takeaway from the latest installment of Morgan Stanley's "AlphaWise" survey.
As we enter what many believe will be a transitional period for the US economy, it's important to take the temperature of the consumer by income cohort. Sentiment and confidence surveys suggest Americans are feeling a lot better about things, and as BofA's Michael Hart
I don’t have numbers handy, but I am pretty sure the higher-income quintiles matter substantially more for total consumer spending than the lower-income quintiles. So if higher feels good and lower feels bad, that can still be a net + for total consumer spending.