That sure is a steep drop for an economy with only 8.9% of the populace unemployed. Could the Government be fudging the unemployment numbers?
WASHINGTON (Reuters) — U.S. consumer borrowing fell more than expected in March, plunging a record $11.1 billion, a Federal Reserve report showed Thursday.
March consumer credit fell at an annual rate of 5.2% to a total of $2.55 trillion. This was the biggest percentage drop since December 1990.
February’s decrease was revised to $8.1 billion from an originally reported $7.5 billion drop.
Analysts polled by Reuters were expecting a $3.5 billion drop in consumer borrowing for March.
Non-revolving credit, which includes closed-end loans for big-ticket items like cars, boats, college education and holidays, dropped $5.7 billion, or at a 4.2% rate, to $1.6 trillion.
Revolving credit, made up of credit and charge cards, fell $5.4 billion, or at a 6.8% rate, to $946 billion in March. This compared with a revised $9.7 billion drop in February. Consumer credit falls a record $11.1 billion in March – May. 7, 2009
After all if only 8.9% of the folks are unemployed like the Government says than why is this happening? Could the Government be full of shit about the unemployment numbers? Nah, the Government never lies. They would never change the way unemployment is calculated to make themselves look better.
Well let me just say that if you are interested in the economy and you don’t have a subscription to John Williams website then you are missing the real story.
Here is a taste and here is the link to the site, Shadow Stats.
JOHN WILLIAMS’ SHADOW GOVERNMENT STATISTICS FLASH UPDATE May 8, 2009 __________ Better-Than-Expected April Jobs Report Had A Bad Odor to It 539,000 Jobs Loss was 605,000 Net of Revisions, 491,000 Net of CSFB Birth-Death Bias Showed Unusual Jump in April __________ PLEASE NOTE:
The next planned Flash Update will follow the release of the April retail sales report on Wednesday, May 13th, with a subsequent update following the April CPI report on Friday, May 15th. – Best wishes to all, John Williams CBS news radio this morning (May 8th) was headlining and hyping a likely improvement in the jobs picture, well before the April employment report was released. Where the White House formally received the employment detail after the markets closed on Thursday (and probably had a good sense of the number a week before), today’s reporting looked very much like an orchestrated event. News organizations usually are pretty conservative about touting market-moving reports in advance of a release.
Continuing a pattern seen in the last seven monthly payroll reports, today’s estimates included negative revisions to the previously-report February and March payroll changes (see the Reporting/Market Focus in the most recent SGS Newsletter No. 50, for further background on this indication of flawed reporting), but the Concurrent Seasonal Factor Bias (CSFB) reversed in April (see below). There also was an unusual surge in birth-death modeling bias. Separately, unusual seasonal adjustments were apparent in the unemployment report, which, unlike the payroll reporting, was exactly as bad as expected by consensus forecasts.
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