Economists believe that many consumers, liberated from Delta-variant lockdowns, have been spending enthusiastically before the Christmas season to avoid shortages.
But despite the slowdown in spending gains, consumer demand is well above last year’s levels, with retail sales – the largest driver of the US economic activity – rising 18.2% in November from a year earlier.
“It’s very possible that people are taking a bit of an advantage or changing lanes because they are afraid of bad news coming from the Fed,” Julius de Kempenaer, a senior technical analyst at StockCharts.com, told Reuters.
“But on the other hand, if the market were really afraid of bad news, the futures should have moved a lot more. So, this is not really a market that is speaking its voice, not yet.”
With higher interest rates forecast – economists polled by Reuters predict rate rises of 0.25-0.50% in the third quarter of 2022, followed by another in the fourth – economists say that consumers may be spending before belt-tightening as pandemic support cheques end and the cost of credit increases.
Nothing in this sort of writing engages with the crush of lonely, deadening anomie. Consumers make demands. They speak their voices through the act of purchasing. Purchasing „goods“.
