Consumer Spending Tumbles At Fastest Rate Since October 2009

This article was originally published at Zero Hedge / Alt-Market.com

Goodbye GDP hopes: Consumer Spending tumbled 0.2% against expectations of growing 0.1%, dropping at the fastest pace since October 2009. This is the biggest miss since Jan 2014 – in the middle of the PolarVortex. Did it snow in September, and whatever happened to that spending spree that lower gas prices were supposed to lead to? The spending decline was driven by a tumble in spending on both non-durable ($8.1 billion) and mostly durable goods ($26.4 billion). Also, what happened to that surge in consumer confidence – guess broke Americans can’t monetize being “confident” about their rising wages just yet.

Putting this number in context, this was the first decling in consumer spending in 8 months and just the third time there was a decline in the so-called (central bank) balance sheet recovery. Furthermore, as the PCE deflator printed at 1.4%, below the consensus 1.5% print, expect much more deflation to be exported out of Japan in the coming months leading to much confused consteration everywhere.

In other news, the personal saving rate rose once again, by a modest 0.2% to 5.6%. This was tied for the highest saving rate number since 2012.

And with that let the latest bout of downward GDP revisions begin.