Then there was the decline in real disposable income and another sharp decline in the personal saving rate, which has only been briefly lower in the housing bubble twenty years ago. Consumers are running out of financial resources to maintain their spending, which stalled out last month.
The economy isn’t just soft, it’s struggling. That's the clear message in the flood of economic data released today.
Ordered from least to most worrisome:
First-quarter real GDP was revised down to just 1.6% and this includes the bounce back from the government shutdown at the end of last year.