The New York Times reports:
The provisional economic recovery has been helped in large part by the spending of the most affluent.
Late last year those households started buying with much more confidence, while other consumers held back. Now, even the rich appear to be tightening their belts.
“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.
There's more:
But the Top 5 percent in income earners — those households earning $210,000 or more — account for about one-third of consumer outlays, including spending on goods and services, interest payments on consumer debt and cash gifts, according to an analysis of Federal Reserve data by Moody’s Analytics. That means the purchasing decisions of the rich have an outsize effect on economic data.
An article well worth your time.
