Consumption

America's K-shaped economy continues to be a defining feature of our economic landscape in 2025, highlighting the stark contrast between the resilient upper echelons and the increasingly fragile lower segments of society.

Happy Valentine’s Day!  It’s the day when people express their love for those nearest to their hearts.

Ghosts are typically associated with negative connotations.  Only Casper the Friendly Ghost comes to mind as an apparition with a positive reputation.  Unlike his spooky peers, this one is kindhearted, seeking to befriend people, not scare them.  Banks can sometimes get a bad rap as well.  After all, their reputations haven’t fully recovered from the frightening episod

Black Friday’s moniker is explained as the day when retailers go from being in the red for the year into positive earnings. Atlas won’t argue, but we cannot say for sure that this is still what happens. After your heart calms down from all the savings on Friday, you can hit Main Street America for Small Business Saturday. What a weekend. And then when you get bac

Retail sales gained back all the prior period’s losses and then some in October 2019 according to the latest data from the Census Bureau.  This indicator rose $526.5 billion to start the final quarter after declining $525.2 billion in September.  Year-over-year, retail sales are up 3.1 percent.

According to anecdotal evidence, slacklining is gaining popularity.  I have seen participants engaged in the balancing act more frequently lately.  Slacklining is an activity requiring stability and various levels of tension.  Essentially, a line is suspended between two trees with a modest amount of “slack” creating a dynamic line which will stretch and bounce while

Retail sales jumped in September 2017 according to the Census Bureau’s data.  After falling a revised 0.1 percent in August (originally -0.2 percent), the value of transactions climbed 1.6 percent as the third quarter came to a close.  Versus a year earlier, retail sales increased 4.4 percent.  However, it appears some of the data was influenced by difficult weather in the

America’s gross domestic product (GDP) grew 2.6 percent on an annualized basis during the second quarter of 2017 according to the first of at least three estimates from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. This represents an acceleration compared to the economy’s pace in the first three months of this year when output grew by just 1.2 percent (downwardly revised from 1.4 percent).

Retail Sales declined for a second consecutive month in June 2017 according to data from the Census Bureau. Following May’s upwardly revised decline of 0.1 percent (originally -0.3 percent), this indicator dropped 0.2 percent. Not only was the monthly change negative, but the year-over-year trend decelerated to just 2.8 percent from 4.1 percent in the prior period.