Diane Swonk
Diane Swonk
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More and more retailers are feeding on a smaller consumer pie, and many are going away hungry, ... What Wall Street Wants from the Retail Industry.
consumer credit economy goes haunt major
When the economy goes back down again, years down the road, will consumer credit be a major problem, like it was in the 1990-91 recession? ... Yes, it could come back to haunt us. But right now, it's a macroeconomic plus.
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It's hard to kill this darn consumer, isn't it? Anyone who is losing sleep over the consumer is losing sleep over the wrong thing.
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It's all vehicle sales and gas. Chain-store sales were relatively strong during the month, suggesting consumers diverted their vehicle spending to other sectors. We also had a cold snap which prompted early spending on winter wear.
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The question is not whether the consumer is slowing. From the Fed's perspective, it's whether the consumer is slowing down fast enough to keep inflation in check,
collapse consumer recession unusual
This is a very unusual recession in that the consumer did not collapse and incomes are in the black,
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I think you have to take the January numbers with a bit of a grain of salt. Consumer confidence is still quite strong and I think we'll see at least a partial recovery in activity in February and through the spring.
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Retailers ordered extremely conservatively for the holiday season. The shelves aren't overly abundant with goods, and controlling inventories has finally made it into broad retailers, not just Wal-Mart. That's important because it means a lot of the early promotions we've seen have brought the consumers in, but has left less on the shelves with less selection.
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Not only are retailers doing more with less, like every other large corporation, and taking advantage of six fewer days in the shopping season, but they are actually hiring less this holiday shopping season, so there's fewer people on the floors actually helping consumers out.
business consumer die face slack time
The consumer is not about to die on us, but let's face it, it's time for them to give a little slack to the business sector.
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We weren't running our heaters very much this winter and this would have the effect of slowing down production,
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What the Fed told us today is, we don't think we are done yet and we are not sure when we will be done.
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It was an extraordinary quarter for productivity growth. Katrina was expected to lop off growth and give us a crippled and less efficient quarter. Instead, it showed how remarkably resilient the U.S. economy was both in response to the hurricanes and the energy shocks that accompanied them.
behind creep inflation pressure pressures
Is the pressure on inflation behind us? I think not. Inflationary pressures are not going to surge overnight, but they'll creep up.