I am not sure when (or why) yahoofinance started hiring its own reporters but oh well.
So everyone is broke. What a shock.
las vegas is beginning to suffer lack of spending in its city.
Allan
With prices the way they are, I’m surprised it isn’t worse. Do people live off a credit card?
Hmm
Let’s see, eat, try to keep your house, pay for fuel or buy ■■■■■
That’s a tough one 
Am I reading this correctly? Since 2010 it spiked like that? Why from 2010? What caused it? This is insane.
This orange line shows all (cpi-adjusted) retail spending including
- buying cars and trucks
- buying gas
- eating at restaurants
- drinking at bars
- shopping online at sites that do not have a physical store
This blue line shows “core retail”
It is retail sales minus those things (cpi-adjusted).
(Note specifically it includes online shopping at Walmart and, online shopping at Best Buy etc. because those places have physical stores.)
The difference between the two lines is remarkable.
Yes
You are reading that correctly.
In 2010
- Banks suddenly stopped giving home new equity loans.
- 10% of existing home equity loans got paid-off in a single year
- Much of that activity apparently shifted to credit cards and personal loans.
Total credit card debt and other consumer loans suddenly shifted from ~4% of PCE to ~6% of PCE
(PCE is a number that is smaller than gross income, which is a number smaller than GDP)
Nuts. The only thing I use a credit card for is Amazon orders. Literally nothing else. Not even gas. But I’ve always been weird this way. I do not like debt or payments of any kind.
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I use a mixture of cash and debit/credit. All bills obligations I have auto pay for with my card. Online purchases of course on a card. Other purchases are a mix depending on how much cash I have on me at the time. We also do not likedebt and prefer to pay as we go. We did have to take out a loan for my vehicle, but like we always do we make more than the min payment and pay off years early. Same with our mortgage. We make extra principle payments every month and will have it paid off early as well.
I kept looking for some change in accounting,
or some change in law that would explain the sudden upsurge.
(Although the sudden shut-off in home equity loans is obviously important.)
I came across this:
The Fed Funds rate dropped from 5% to 0% in 2009.
Obviously this will create a surge in some kind of lending,
since home equity loans were shut-off that year, credit card loans makes sense.
Tariffs will help…
This timing with 0% seems to coincide with the spikes in the last graph. It is unmistakable.
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If you say so. Broke ass Americans don’t give a ■■■■ about tariffs.
They give a ■■■■ about inflation. Will tariffs help?
They could. Tariffs are just as likely to be deflationary as inflationary.
Some of that depends on which taxes they replace and if they are unilateral.
Tariffs that replace taxes on overtime could have a very beneficial impact on the economy.
So could tariffs that are in response to years and years of tariffs and unfair trade practices by other nations.
