NYTimes blames non-recovery on the rich.
Wealthy Reduce Buying in a Blow to the Recovery
The economic recovery has been helped in large part by the spending of the most affluent. Now, even the rich appear to be tightening their belts.MultimediaGraphicSaving vs. SpendingLate last year, the highest-income households started spending more confidently, while other consumers held back. But their confidence has since ebbed, according to retail sales reports and some economic analysis.“One of the reasons that the recovery has lost momentum is that high-end consumers have become more jittery and more cautious,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Analytics.That cautious attitude stems in part from concerns about global instability, especially in Europe, and in part from the volatility of the stock market in recent months. Major stock indexes fell sharply on Friday, after several big companies announced disappointing earnings. Bank stocks were the biggest losers as investors wrestled with the twin issues of lower trading profits from Citibank and Bank of America and the prospect that new financial regulation would further crimp their businesses.
via The Rich Catch Everyone Else’s Cutback Fever – NYTimes.com.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_c.png?x-id=b172cef0-33d6-4448-82be-e2072ae13c51)