If consumer confidence is at a 5 year high, why are consumers reducing their spending? Are they just conducting their surveys in Manhattan and the Hamptons?
If we are having a jobs recovery ( the unemployment rate keeps going down) why is national wage income at the same level as last November?
If consumer spending makes up 71% of GDP and is declining, how can GDP be a positive 2.5%?
Five years ago in 2008, national personal income was $12.6 trillion.
Today it is $13.7 trillion, an 8.7% increase in five freaking years. Even the BLS manipulated CPI is up 9.5% over this time frame. On top of that, $600 billion of the $1.1 trillion increase is totally due to increases in government transfers from the productive members of society to the non-productive members of society. You have to love the Orwellian definition of personal income.
Prior to the Wall Street created financial collapse, government transfers accounted for 14.2% of personal income. Today they account for a record 17.7% of personal income. But don’t you worry. Ben Bernanke took $450 billion from senior citizen savers annually andcontinues to give it to the Wall Street bankers.
How have we had a four year recovery without personal spending recovering? We didn’t. If you fake the inflation rate, you can miraculously report a positive GDP.
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