Oh, NOW we realize spending and incomes have held up just fine this year?

Ahead of the holidays, we got the November income and spending report for the US economy. And there was lots of good news to take from it.

U.S. consumer spending increased in November amid strong demand for a range of goods and services, underscoring the economy's resilience, which saw the Federal Reserve this week projecting fewer interest rate cuts in 2025 than it had in September.

There was also good news on inflation last month after a series of warmer readings. The report from the Commerce Department on Friday showed moderate monthly rises in prices, with a measure of underlying inflation posting its smallest gain in six months. Nonetheless, the annual increase in core inflation, excluding food and energy, remained stubbornly well above the U.S. central bank's 2% target....

Personal income rose 0.3%, with wages shooting up 0.6%. Income at the disposal of households after accounting for inflation rose 0.2%, meaning some tapped their savings to fund purchases. The saving rate dipped to 4.4% from 4.5% in October.

Economists did not believe that the moderation in inflation last month would have changed the tone of the Fed's message on Wednesday. The personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index rose 0.1% after an unrevised 0.2% gain in October.

The Fed's report on Wednesday made the DOW Jones Industrial Average drop more than 1,100 points on fears that inflation was coming back and would get higher in 2025. But nearly half of those losses were clawed back on Friday after this report showed the Fed's favored inflation gauge inidicated prices stayed under control while Americans made more money and were willing to keep spending it.

After a slowdown in early 2024, you can see that we've returned to trend on wage and salary growth, and inflation-adjusted consumer spending looks like it's going to continue to be a boost for the US economy to round out 2024.

While spending on services continues to go up, we've also seen a nice rebound on the goods side for much of 2024, especially among durable goods.

But it's also not overly different than the good economy that we've had in the last 6 months. So what explains this turnaround in attitude?

Look either the entire US economy turned around sometime in the month of November, or the economy really was great and we’ve just been mainlining media doomerism all along

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— Will Stancil (@whstancil.bsky.social) December 21, 2024 at 7:42 AM

Yes I know the scale makes that overall change look bigger than it was. But it definitely illustrates how full of shit MAGAs and the corporate economy have been this year. And these dishonest brokers deserve the pains that are coming as these good economic times come to an end, and people realize they've been had, which seems likely to happen sooner than later.