This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
Continued Weak Consumer Spending "Puzzles" BofA
BofAML's Michelle Meyer is "puzzled" at why the US consumer is not the spendaholic her textbooks said they should be by now...
A setback after the bounce in March
Based on BAC internal data, which tracks spending on credit and debit cards, consumer spending slowed in April. Retail sales ex-autos declined 0.1% mom seasonally adjusted after climbing 0.8% in March. It is prudent to smooth through the last three months, which reveals an average monthly gain of 0.3%.
Given the great deal of noise in the data, it is helpful to examine spending trends by sector.
Department store sales were the weakest, maintaining the post-recession trend of contraction. The housing-related sectors were also sluggish, with a decline in spending on home improvements and home goods. There seemed to be a weaker trend to the former, but the drop in home goods looked like a reversal from recent strength. On the other end, there was a notable gain in spending at electronic stores, which we think may have partly owed to the launch of the Apple iWatch. As we show in Chart 2, prior releases of Apple products caused notable spikes in spending, which the seasonal adjustment process did not capture.
The gain this time was modest relative to previous iPad and iPhone releases. This is likely because much of the sales were on pre-order, which means that actual sales will happen with a lag.
We are left puzzled by the weak April consumer spending data - we expected the consumer to be a tailwind for growth in this year, offsetting the drag from weaker investment and manufacturing. Even accounting for the softer jobs data in the past two months, the labor market added an average of 255,000 jobs a month over the past six months. Consumers have benefited from lower gasoline prices and confidence has picked up.
If consumer spending does not accelerate, we will have to question our forecast for GDP growth to accelerate back above 3.0% in the second half of the year.
* * *
It appears we are going to need a new excuse...
- 10737 reads
- Printer-friendly version
- Send to friend
- advertisements -




Seriously?
One word BanksterBoyz-buy a clue "ObamaCare"
It was supposd to have recollateralized the derivative house of cards by hustling another 30 million paying bodies into the bankers service-but that hasn't materialized. "can't get blood from a stone" There are good reasons 30 million people were uinsured. Even a wand waving Harry Potter can't change that.
Obamacare's increased costs has sucked out discretionary spending from all corners of the service economy, in the process hollowing out previously "good" collateral.
Its complete repeal by MN tonight would lessen the October Crash on the horizon triggered by lack of discretionary spending income; it would also bolster some of the collateral dykes a bit.
But absent a productive economy since about 2006, the collateral shortage on the horizon is a tsunami at this point.
The banks, fueled by government Constitutionally unrestrained, have managed to crap the world.
There was an article on this very site that the average age of the minimum wage earner was 36 years old. This may have a little more to do with it.
The Parasites are taking over the host. A never ending hunger till it all just stops.
"BofAML's Michelle Meyer is "puzzled" at why the US consumer is not the spendaholic her textbooks said they should be by now..."
Hi. My name is Cognitive Dissonance and I'm a spendaholic. It's been 2 months and 10 days since I last mindlessly spent.
<Though I did just spend $1.50 on a large coffee with three cream and three sugar at McDonalds. Does that count as mindless or just plain stupid?
You probably shouldn't eat that much sugar, and I certainly hope whether you'd asked if the coffee was fair trade, organic, gluten free and involved no child labor. Did you check to make sure the cup was made of 100% recycled materials and did you dispose of all the refuse in a proper caring manner? And by the way, if you scalded yourself, you can sue them for your own incompetence and win a major settlement, helping bring Corporate USA to it's very knees thereby decimating all those evil jobs that people have to fill working 25.7 hours per week at minimum wage with no benefits. Their poor quality of life must be contested vigorously in the Economic Arena.....
BTW, Cog.... if you ever find yourself stupendously bent, do not try placing a testicle in a Keurig (Nebulizer) coffee maker for shits and grins, no matter whether it seems like a good idea at the time.
"BofAML's Michelle Meyer is "puzzled" at why the US consumer is not the spendaholic her textbooks said they should be by now..."
Er...maybe because a lot of us don't have jobs, let alone careers?
Possibly prices of most things are RIDICULOUS, so why buy?
Maybe we're living paycheck to paycheck?
About time that woman walked down any street with her eyes open...
90% of the wall street fuckwits are born and raised in the northeast corridor. They have no grasp of what real life is like in the rest of the country.
In other news, one of the Huffington Post's headlines; "Yemen on brink of war."
But....But.... Oh, it rained in April
"We are left puzzled by the weak April consumer spending data".
Fuckwits.
DavidC
How anybody can to this day remain "puzzled" is grounds for a public shaming in the stocks followed by disembowelment, drawing and quartering after being almost pressed to death in between water-boarding questioning of "Really Michelle, just how dumb are you?"
Well, that may be a bit overly medieval, but gets to the gist of the magnanimity of the ignorance.
In fact, why the fuck would anybody "yet puzzled" openly admit to such?
No new issue designations for you, Michelle.
In fact, if you worked for me, that simple line would comprise your entire year end review.
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
Upton Sinclair, 1935
yea, You don't really believe that they believe their own prognosis do you. They are part of the spin cycle though on a different level. If debt equals money creation they need to paint a happy face on this turd so commercial projects keep breaking ground eager to lap up all that excess consumer spending. They know the consumer is a dead man walking. I don't know what is going to fill the huge void in peoples lifes when they can no longer just scrape together enough to cover their head and eat. Mass suicides may break out when they can't blow 50 buck on a cheese burger and a new moo moo.
Why weak?
This snippet from David Collums 2014 year in review sums it up best:
"[Malls] are trying to change; they’re trying to get different kinds of anchors, discount stores. . . . What’s going on is the customers don’t have the fucking money. That’s it. This isn’t rocket science.”
~Howard Davidowitz, flamboyant retail analyst
Ha ha! You fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders - The most famous of which is "never get involved in a land war in Asia" - but only slightly less well-known is this: "Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line"! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha... [/Vizzini]
As Consuela of Family Guy says... "No, No, I have no money...."
So much for that total consumer experience during the holidays for shoppers!
So much for that free health care poor peeps can't afford having to pay the tax penalty for not having health insurance and if they can afford it have giant $6000 minimum deductibles to some crap oh doctor as since most out of reach of policy inclusion.
Have to save up for additional taxes on fuel because all the other taxes in fuel have been emptied by the slush fund which never funded what it was suppose to fund in the first place and there is never enough money to throw away on what ever it is but what it was sold to the public to do.... but instead back door deals inside the dicklick beltway.
Ah yes among the war on consumers ..... DC won they get to buy every thing now because our brains r too dangerous and our minds must fry like eggs on the government in Armageddon under the guise of peace.
Dude, that's beautiful.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5vALLPvSvY
"I've been soooooooooo wrong,
For sooooooooooo long...."
--Patsy Cline
I am puzzled why any dumb son of a bitch would put either their money or their trust in the criminal organization BOA.
Enough said.
been working on these fibonacci chats since 2008 and by my calculations the consumer should be back spending by summer 2026.
" We-B-Broke. "
: You ain't shit. You just like your daddy. You don't do shit, and you never gonna amount to shit. All you do is eat, sleep, and shit.
BofA, I can solve the puzzle for you, and I'm no overpaid economist. Consumers are all spent out, 30 years of ludicrous debt accumulation will take it's toll.
"Consumer spending hasn't picked up? Really? Do you even know how much of my bonus check I blew on shoes alone?"
I watch.
Where is 20% of the economy--health care & medical insurance? Duh!
"BofAML's Michelle Meyer is "puzzled" at why the US consumer is not the spendaholic her textbooks said they should be by now..."
The 3 Blind Mice would be able to see what this fucking donkey cannot --- no jobs hunny --- no munny hunnny - no spending hunny.
Can someone show this fucking 'highly educated' monkey this http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/2014...
Do these fucking fools actually believe what they see on cnBS --- or are they just saying what they are told to say to try to keep the CONfidence game going.
BofA is all poozled, poor monkeys, ... and bragging about it?
Telegraphing their next forecast for less optimism on the GDP growth, got it.
Once again the answer is simple - people just need to stop being poor, get some wealth (preferably in equities), then buy some shit.