consumers

Consumerist Christmas - Can it survive?

Submitted by on

By Numerian

It isn’t even important whether you or your family have a Merry or a Happy Christmas – the only important thing is whether corporations have a profitable Christmas. This is the true meaning of Christmas.

The mighty American marketing machine known as Christmas put on a brave front this weekend. Stores across the country opened up earlier than ever – some as early as 2:00 a.m. on Friday morning – and shoppers responded. Some consumers gave up their Thanksgiving Thursday altogether by using that day to stake their position on a sidewalk outside Best Buy, Wal-Mart, Target, or Sears. The rewards were high – those who were first in the store on Black Friday had the best shot at buying at deep, deep discounts. Flat screen HDTVs, which were otherwise priced at $1,000 minimum, were on sale for $300, but only on Black Friday and only to the earliest few into the store. (Image)

Why Economic Growth in the United States Cannot Happen

By Joaquin posted by Michael Collins


So, you cut back on your lifestyle; performed a so un-Greek personal austerity reset but your credit card balance is still creeping up; or perhaps you are slowly burning through your savings; or you are at the end of the line; abandon ship. Whatever, you have a lot of company out there. (Image)

Why is it so hard to make ends meet these days? The days of living high on the credit hog are over and we all have to get small but in the end, we still have to make ends meet; we have to pay for food, pay for utilities, buy gas, etc. How to make that work?

We all bought a lot of stuff during those days of easy credit. Debt driven demand drove up the value of lots of things. Homes increased in value so much that they became a kind of income harvested through a home equity line of credit. Autos got big and powerful again making them unaffordable to buy and operate now that we have to live within our means. Cell phones replaced land lines and cost a lot more; especially when everyone in the family has to have one. Maybe you have a home that you cannot sell and you are stuck living 20 miles or more from your workplace and your car is fast reaching the point when you will need a new one just to get to work.

April retail sales: Consumers stay zombified

The Census Bureau reported this morning that:

Retail trade sales were down 0.4 percent (±0.7%)* from March 2009 and 11.4 percent (±0.7%) below last year. Gasoline stations sales were down 36.4 percent (±1.5%) from April 2008 and motor vehicle and parts dealers sales were down 20.7 percent (±2.3%) from last year.

This drop was not anticipated by most observers.

As with March, it appears that almost all of the decline in consumer sales vs. a year ago is cars and gas. (Update: Ex-gas and cars, YoY retail sales are flat to -0.1%).

Last month's decline failed to take into account the early Easter from last year vs. this year. Thus we should probably average the two months' data, for a decline of -.9% YoY.

Confessions of an Economic Populist

I am an economic populist. What does that mean? According to Wiki that means

a member of a United States political party formed in 1891 primarily to represent agrarian interests and to advocate the free coinage of silver and government control of monopolies.

a believer in the rights, wisdom, or virtues of the common people

The year 1891 was a long time ago are there really any Populist party members still around? Most likely no, and any politician who espouses populist rhetoric is instantly shouted down in the media by the opposition and even their own political party.

So who is the economic populist today?

Tuesday proving Larry Kudlow and other Ayn Rand droogies wrong

For anyone whose read my pieces in the past, knows that I hold a certain disdain towards former Reagan White House OMB Associate Director/conservative-libertarian Ayn Rand acolyte Larry Kudlow. It's nothing personal against the guy, it's his ideas and economic policy objectives that I find fault with. For the past couple of months, he's been going on about this is the "Goldilocks economy." Essentially, that we're worrying about nothing because one bad economic indicator is being offset by a good one (mind you, he's often just used productivity as that one). Well today, despite his claims that all is almost well, we got some news that just proves Larry Kudlow wrong!

Ok, I will give him some credit. He isn't a Pollyanna and he has come out and said this or that has been bad or needs to get better. Still, his overall anthem is that things are really great and that we (he's quoted Phil Graham) should stop "whining."

Inflation is still there and going higher.