The headlines say consumer credit rate of annual growth improved from last month. We agree but our analysis shows a lower rate of growth.
Analyst Opinion of the Consumer Credit Situation
Not only does this data set suffer from backward revision (at times moderate to significant enough to change trends), but the use of compounding (projecting monthly change as annual change) by the Federal Reserve to determine consumer credit growth rates exaggerates the volatility in this data. [and this month the headline data shows very poor growth when the real year-over-year growth shows little change in the rate of growth from the revised data of last month]
A quick look at what is going on is summarized in the graph below which shows a gentle deceleration of consumer credit (blue line in graph below) over the last year.
Last month’s headline said:
In July, consumer credit increased at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5 percent. Revolving credit increased at an annual rate of 1-1/2 percent, while nonrevolving credit increased at an annual rate of 6-1/2 percent.
This month’s headlines said:
In August, consumer credit increased at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 6-1/4 percent. Revolving credit increased at an annual rate of 5-1/2 percent, while nonrevolving credit increased at an annual rate of 6-1/2 percent.
Econintersect’s view:
Unadjusted Consumer Credit Outstanding
Overall takeaways from this month’s data:
