- Image via Wikipedia
NYTimes blames non-recovery on the rich.
The economic recovery has been helped in large part by the spending of the most affluent. Now, even the rich appear to be tightening their belts.
Late last year, the highest-income households started spending more confidently, while other consumers held back. But their confidence has since ebbed, according to retail sales reports and some economic analysis.
“One of the reasons that the recovery has lost momentum is that high-end consumers have become more jittery and more cautious,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Analytics.
That cautious attitude stems in part from concerns about global instability, especially in Europe, and in part from the volatility of the stock market in recent months. Major stock indexes fell sharply on Friday, after several big companies announced disappointing earnings. Bank stocks were the biggest losers as investors wrestled with the twin issues of lower trading profits from Citibank and Bank of America and the prospect that new financial regulation would further crimp their businesses.
Though stock performance has a bigger psychological and financial impact on high-income households, consumers of all income levels are fretting more about their financial future, perhaps bracing for the possibility of another economic contraction. Consumer confidence slumped in July to its lowest point since August 2009 in the Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan index released on Friday.
via The Rich Catch Everyone Else’s Cutback Fever – NYTimes.com.
Related articles by Zemanta
- “Rich getting ready for higher taxes?” and related posts (prairiepundit.blogspot.com)
- Consumer-spending trend is a shaky foundation for economic recovery (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
- RBC Consumer Outlook Index: Consumers expect financial reform efforts in Congress to have positive impact on U.S. economy, stability of U.S. financial system (newswire.ca)
