I know the jobs report bounced back and everyone got all excited and clearly, it's a good sign because it would have been a nail in the coffin, I think, for the growth trend for the remainder of the year had that not happened.
However, looking at Federal Government spending trends--and there is the risk that I am getting too "micro" in my analysis, here, but nonetheless--it seems to me that spending data has slowed to a stall, at least the way I see it, and that suggests the economy is also at a stall.
Spending could pick up and, admittedly, it is looking a little bit better now than it looked around the first and second weeks in April and I understand that April, being tax month, is when individual and firms' bank accounts get drained so there is some seasonality at play here.
With respect to that latter comment, being that this is the seasonal, "Sell in May and go away" period and the market is hanging in there pretty well (i.e. undergoing perhaps a "churning" correction), then things may actually not be all that bad.
I will see in the coming days, based off flows from the DTS, what it looks like.
#Itsnotaboutthedeficit
2 comments:
April, being tax month, is when individual and firms' bank accounts get drained
I still contend that consumer spending usually increases the first 5 months of the year due to tax REFUND season. Where did I get this idea?
Mike,
Perhaps you're not being micro enough. Just ask regular people if their economic circumstances have improved. The answer is almost certainly no.
Bill Mitchell, for example, is worried by the quality of the jobs being produced: part-time, low pay, very little job security, etc. Working people are really feeling the pinch. And if this is a recovery, what's a recession going to feel like?
Here in the UK, when documentaries are aired about the US, it's genuinely shocking.
I can't remember which US state the film makers were in, but in one case a charitable dental service was offering free dental care. Several thousand poor people turned up. None of them had been able to afford to see a dentist in years, some times decades.
That isn't what was so shocking. We've known for a long time that about a third of the population are too poor to access heath care. It's what came next that was so terrible.
When asked where many of these people were living, it turned out that they were living in tents in the woods! Not only could they not afford a dental plan or a health plan, they even couldn't afford a trailer park. And this in the richest country in history.
I imagine some of these tent dwellers may have got a job in Obama's recovery, but they're probably still living in the woods and eating cheap Walmart junk just to stay alive. And they're probably Tea Party Republicans too!
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