Yet More Economic Data Revisions

It is getting to be a tiresome routine–every month there are some revisions, usually in the negative direction, to important economic data.  This month featured a regular every five years review process and subsequent revisions to data going back over 20 years, but including this year.  And the politically driven approach of having excessively positive initial numbers that are later revised downward or upward, whichever means it got worse, continues.  The essence of the revised data is that consumer spending, which is 70% of our economy, was decreased compared to the prior releases.  Personal consumption this year was revised to half the initial reported number.  Largely this reflects continuing exhaustion of the excess savings built up by most households during the epidemic, coupled with the stress of ongoing drops in real income, as inflation outpaces income growth.  And estimates of the amount of the excess savings were reduced as well, and remain at a low level.  It seems unlikely that consumer spending, especially given the state of credit card debit and interest rates, can prop our flailing economy up any longer.  Wage growth is slowing, while inflation in prices of goods has actually risen and services prices continue to grow at a high level.  The Bidenmentia policies of lunatic levels of spending on non-productive items, encouraging people not to work, making it hard for businesses to function rationally and draining the strategic oil reserve have hit a dead end and we are about to fall off the proverbial cliff.     (ZH Post) (ZH Post)