May 6. Today we look at consumers’ renewed appetite for holidays, the cost of living in Tokyo, and how the pandemic impacted spending by U.S. households of different income levels.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said this week that nothing indicates the U.S. economy is “close to or vulnerable to a recession” just now. That assessment is certainly borne up by strong signs of a long-awaited rebound in tourism.
Corporate earnings from a swath of companies this week illustrated Americans’ continuing appetite to spend even in face of the biggest cost-of-living surge in four decades, and a rebound in global tourism more broadly.
Inflation of course accounts for some of the jump in corporate revenues.
But Bank of America said Thursday that its April credit and debt card data showed spending gains over and above inflation. Transaction growth, a more “normalized” indicator, was up 8% from a year before.
Source: Bloomberg
