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Holiday Spending Increased, Defying Fears of a Decline
- maerF0x0 3y agoIMO it means nothing if it was just increased credit/debt, which I suspect it was given the trend of the past few years. The only thing increased credit/debt points to is a bigger crash later.
- nateb2022 3y agohttps://archive.is/aHnPF https://archive.is/aHnPF
- AndrewKemendo 3y agoA death rattle can often be mistaken for a rally
- eropple 3y agoIt might be! Or it might be the seventh recession predicted out of the last three. Nobody's going to know until later, so is this kind of veiled, content-free foreboding actually like...useful?
- Texasian 3y agoHaving dealt with this person at a former employer: No.
- AndrewKemendo 3y agoDepends on how interested you are in discussion. The best way to get a good answer on the internet is to make a false claim. The second best is to ennervate debate with something. The point I’m making is that these kinds of macro economics statistics almost never actually reflect on the ground understanding of day to day life and even rarer give any meaningful insight. Usually, however, they give a false sense of hope about the actual state of things if you go out into the market, and you look at savings rate that the Fed publishes, if you look at decreasing equity, because people are cashing out with no ability to put back into equity then a clearer picture forms. As I said elsewhere, all the long-term data shows that we are eating our seed corn
- derwiki 3y agoWhy do you think it’s a death rattle?
- AndrewKemendo 3y agoSavings rate is unchanged so people are shopping on credit even more than they were because they are tapped out. The most common equity holdings like single family homes are being bought out at blisteringly fast rates We’re eating our seed corn
- dsugarman 3y agoThe fed pumped interest rates to bankrupt everyone and create a recession to drop demand off a cliff to fight inflation. The recession never came because people have weathered the storm through credit and other means. Fed is starting to drop interest rates because inflation is under control. Inflation was caused by the massive increase in money supply due to the fed buying up assets and to a lesser extent the covid stimmys. Inflation followed the curve of the money supply pretty closely. The interest rates just hurt everyone, we need some brighter minds with more open thought handling the central bank fiscal policy in my humble opinion
- hiddencost 3y agoMeh. Economy would have collapsed without stimulus during COVID. That inflation has come down without a recession is a miracle. Given a potentially catastrophic situation, we're incredibly lucky to have gotten off this easy.
- KMag 3y agoI hope you're being hyperbolic about the Fed's intentions. Bankruptcies and recession are often unwanted side-effects of attempts to tame inflation, not intentional effects.
- dsugarman 3y agoNo, that's exactly how they look at it. They see it as they can't really change supply but they can lower demand by removing all purchase power and they look at the recession as a necessary goal to tame inflation.
- fmajid 3y agoI prefer the expression “dead-cat bounce”.
- dragonwriter 3y agoA dead cat bounce is a short rebound that is a brief interruption in a decline, the US economy has been in an expansion for more than three years since the extremely sharp, extremely brief early-2020 COVID recession. Whatever the current condition is, its not a dead cat bounce. (The recent change isn't fron decline to growth, its fron a broad public expectation of future decline to more positive forward expectations.) I suppose you could try to argue its a dead cat bounce in the future expectations component of sentiment rather than in the econony itself.
- throwaway5959 3y agoTo people who voted for Donald Trump in the last election, the economy crashed hard in January of 2021. It’s only gotten worse for them. This is of course nonsense, the economy hasn’t registered less than 1% annual growth the whole time, but feelings matter more than facts to people it would seem. https://images.app.goo.gl/NkTBByuiRr1H4ZxX6 https://images.app.goo.gl/NkTBByuiRr1H4ZxX6
- andsoitis 3y agoFine to be skeptical, but I prefer to look at the data and inference drawn by sources who specialize in economic, investment, and financial matters. For instance: - The Economist, which has had a number of articles over the last few months about how the American economy is doing, e.g. https://www.economist.com/business/2023/10/29/americas-economy-is-booming-why-arent-its-bosses-happier https://www.economist.com/business/2023/10/29/americas-econo... - Vanguard's outlook for the next 10 years, in which they talk about how well the US economy is faring - https://corporate.vanguard.com/content/dam/corp/research/pdf/isg_vemo_2024.pdf https://corporate.vanguard.com/content/dam/corp/research/pdf...
- postsantum 3y ago> Holiday Spending Increased > numbers are not adjusted for inflation
- fbdrgvv 3y ago[dead]
- stevenAthompson 3y agoThe article addresses this several times: "And even though consumer prices have risen a lot in the last two years, wages have grown faster on the whole" "The holiday sales figures, driven by a healthy labor market and wage gains, suggests that the economy remains strong."
- tsimionescu 3y agoIf both prices and wages have risen commensurately, that's called inflation.
- stevenAthompson 3y ago"faster as a whole" !== "commensurately"
- postsantum 3y agoThese two points are mostly irrelevant (and not substantiated by data in the article). Regardless of whether they are true or not, high inflation leads to higher spending. That makes the title kind of misleading
- stevenAthompson 3y ago>(and not substantiated by data in the article) They're direct quotes from the article. The article states that wages are increasing faster than prices. If wages are increasing faster than the prices then it is not inflation. Do you have alternative evidence that leads you to believe the article is inaccurate about this? Or is your disagreement based more on your own subjective feelings and experiences?
- hattmall 3y agoOf course spending is up, everything costs almost doubled.
- SubiculumCode 3y agothey have not doubled unless 5-7% means doubled to you
- maerF0x0 3y agodepends on the commenter's time line. Our base expectation for prices is probably something like a trailing average over time (for me it feels like the 20 year trailing average xD )
- loeg 3y agoInflation is about 64% over the past 20 years, which is less than 100%.
- SV_BubbleTime 3y agoAre wages up 64% in 20 years? Have common investment vehicles increased 64% yields in 20 years? What about fuel? Have social security payouts increased 64% in 20 years?
- maerF0x0 3y ago> common investment vehicles increased 64% yields in 20 years This one is not very relevant because so few people hold these instruments (both in the sense of absolutely owning any, and in a weighted sense of what % of the total rise do they get to share in)
- SV_BubbleTime 3y agoYea, I mean who even has a 401K?
- stevenAthompson 3y agoSome people seem to be disappointed that the economy isn't crumbling. I wonder why?
- draw_down 3y ago[dead]
- orangecat 3y agoThe far right is outraged that the Biden administration has implemented socialism; the far left is outraged that they haven't.
- dragonwriter 3y agoI would say instead: The Right understands that positive perception of the economy rebounds to the benefit of the incumbent President and they want Biden to lose to the Republican nominee for partisan reasons. The far Left understands that positive perception of the economy rebounds to the benefit of the incumbent President and they want Biden to lose to Trump, who they expect to be the Republican nominee, for accelerationist reasons. The news media likes negative spins because public insecurity drives news media consumption.
- foob 3y agoThat's quite the broad brush you're using to paint the Left as accelerationists who favor Trump over Biden.
- dllthomas 3y agoLeaving aside possible disagreement on definitions, it's worth noting that dragonwriter said "the far Left" - that may still be too broad a brush, but it would not seem to extend to the entire Left.
- FooBarBizBazz 3y agoOr, they simply took the bait of 5% cash and were hoping some deals were going to be forthcoming. You could say I'm one of those people. I want home prices to come down. If the property-owning Boomers were to respond, in that housing-crash scenario, by voting for Trump, that'd be on them. I'm sick of being held hostage though. You want me to choose a political leader? How about Mao, to shoot the landlords, or Khrushchev, to build some apartments?
- oldpersonintx 3y agoBNPL is unlocking a lot of opportunities for consumer engagement (translation: buying something and paying for it are two different things) also, the entire economy is now getting revved up for big rate cuts, which should allow consumers to further engage with traditional credit instruments, as well as opportunities for asset owners to unlock more value from rent/lease relationships (translation: lower rates = your rent goes up...if you don't like it, sleep in your car) strong asset prices and renewed valuations in real estate will quiet down inconvenient political rancor and assure Biden re-election (translation: people will tune out tragedy if stocks go high enough)
- StephenSmith 3y agoEarlier Thanksgivings also cause more holiday spending[1]. [1].https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2012/11/21/165655925/how-did-thanksgiving-end-up-on-thursday https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2012/11/21/165655925...
- spogbiper 3y agoI defiantly spent too much on gifts this year
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]