Real Personal Spending Crashes Most Since 2009
While the key number analysts were looking for in today's Personal Spending data was the PCE Price Index, both headline and core, which rose by 1.9% and 1.7% respectively, the latter coming in as expected, just shy of the Fed's 2.0% inflation target, the internals on US incomes and spending were just as notable. Here, the silver lining of a rise in incomes (+0.4% MoM vs +0.3% exp) was dashed by a disappointingly slow growth in spending (+0.2% vs +0.5% prev).