Perhaps the Bureau of Economic Analysis was hoping that today's cornucopia of ugly income and spending data would be enough for those who keep track of the US government's Department of Truth shennanigans and ignore the meat behind the numbers. Whatever the reason, the real story in today's Personal Spending data was not the consumer weakness, but the unceremonious revision of historical data, which as the chart below mysteriously whacked away a whopping $40 billion in real (i.e., inflation adjusted) disposable income. Because as the chart below shows, somehow, somewhere starting in March and continuing through the last month just before the election (the September data was released on October 29 or a week before Obama's reelection), $40 billion in cumulative disposable income evaporated. Where it went, and/or why it had been counted in the first place is anyone's guess. But one thing is certain: 0.25% of annualized GDP was just whacked away. One wonders: how many more such retroactive revisions will we see before reality and economic propaganda myth are finally superimposed?
Source: St. Louis Fed [5]