savings

From all accounts, it looks like Australia is set for a wicked slowdown. Four global industrial economies have been protected by commodity prices. They are Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and Australia. This Goldilocks scenario looks…

The well-deserved euphoria over the European Championship in football has brought welcome relief to Spanish consumers, weighed down by a slow economy. However, global economies have not decoupled from the U.S. slowdown. European economies…

Today, American Express said that consumers are increasingly falling behind on payments. This suggests that credit card charge-offs at banks are about to go much higher in the coming quarters.A story by Bloomberg News reads:American Express…

Hourly wages in the U.S. have not kept pace with inflation in the past 35-40 years. To the degree that U.S. households have been able to maintain higher real household earnings, it is all due to the influx of women into the workforce.…

This is what the recently released retail sales data look like over a longer time-frame.

UPDATE: The latest chart on U.S. consumer credit growth is here. I have been focusing on debt as a primary contributor to the slump the U.S. is experiencing. We've seen skyrocketing Debt-to-GDP and Mortgage Debt. Now, I want to look at…

The United States has gone from saving an average of 8-10% of income for decades to zero or negative savings today. If you look at this chart of 12-month rolling average monthly data, it looks like people actually saved more as inflation…

As the downturn takes hold in the U.S., the obvious dilemma for investors is knowing which sectors to avoid. Financial stocks are a sector obviously fraught with risk as they have already sustained enormous losses with many more to come as…

I happened upon an article at "The Moderate Voice" about "Conspicuous Consumption" originally posted on UPenn's Wharton Business School's website. It's a great piece of research which explains nicely in part why Blacks and Hispanics tend…

The U.S. has been flashing red regarding recession for some time despite the naysayers.First, let me define recession because you usually hear that it's two consecutive quarters of a decline in real GDP. Not exactly. The National Bureau…