by Courtenay Brown at AXIOS
The booming consumer looks to be no more. Shoppers have steadily slowed spending growth this year — a crack in what has been a resilient economy.
Why it matters: This might be the type of cooldown the Fed has longed for in its fight against inflation. But it risks snowballing into the kind of economic weakness that would be difficult to undo.
- “Ebullient post-pandemic retail sales lasted for longer than many expected, and that streak now looks to be finished. We are returning to a normal economic environment,” Oren Klachkin, a financial market economist at Nationwide, wrote in a note Tuesday.
Driving the news: The latest retail sales report shows spending barely rebounded in May after April numbers that were even worse than initially thought — a 0.2% drop, not the flatlining first reported…
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