When the US consumer is out of work, he can't order cable TV. When he can't order cable TV, he gets frustrated. When he is frustrated, he goes outside and does stupid things. Don't do stupid things! But that advice does stop retail office builders, as this chart shows:
The bar chart on the left shows that traffic in retail stores at malls was down during the holidaze, usually the make or break period for retailers. Yet retail space builders increased the amount of floor space available by 43.8 million square feet in 2013. Fewer people are traversing the 109,500 shopping mega-marts that cover our land. When consumers are responsible for 70% of the nation's GDP, no amount of almost-free money from the Fed issued to its private bank stockholders is going to turn that statistic around. The consumer is busted because he is out of work, or his real income has declined. The boom before the bust was financed by debt and rising home equities. That free lunch ended in 2008. Now she is spending more money on gasoline and food than techogadgets:
Gas prices are 150% higher than they were in the early 2000 and that impacts the cost of almost everything including food. The sad fact is the middle class is shrinking, regardless of Barry Soetoro's rhetoric. The labor force has shrunk dramatically over the last fourteen years as this chart shows:
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| charts source: James Quinn, marketoracle.co.uk |
To compound the problem of the falling number of
decent wage earners is the demographic reality that the United States population bulge known as the "baby boomers" are about to enter their golden years without substantial savings (<$50,000) and when elderly people spend less (about 40% less than the peak spending period of 45-54 for those over 65). Frustrated with the facts? You bet.
