WEAK READINGS ON PERSONAL INCOME AND SPENDING

Sam Ro | May 31, 2013, 8:30 AM | 1,188 | The April reading of personal income and spending is out, and it's disappointing.

Personal income was unchanged from a month ago.  Economists expected income to climb by 0.1%.

Spending unexpectedly fell by 0.2%, which was worse than the unchanged level expected.

"The slowing is helping the case of Fed officials arguing against tapering," said High Frequency Economics' Jim Sullivan.

"The 0.2% m/m decline in the nominal value of US monthly consumption in April is not quite as bad as is looks, since it partly reflects the drop back in gasoline prices," said Capital Economics' Paul Ashworth. "Overall, a sobering report for those expecting GDP growth to accelerate sharply."

The savings rate was unchanged at 2.5%.

Markets don't seem to be responding to the news.

Please follow Money Game on Twitter and Facebook.
Follow Sam Ro on Twitter. Tags: Personal Income And Outlays | Get Alerts for these topics »

To embed this post, copy the code below and paste into your website or blog.

View the original article here