Meanwhile, the U.S. consumer continues to spend like there's no tomorrow. Consumer spending for the first half of 1998 increased at about a 6 percent rate - more than twice the recent gain in personal income. Consumer confidence levels are at 30-year highs and consumers are buying new cars, new houses and taking vacations at record rates. According to some economists, quite a bit of it is. T-Bill rates are bond equivalent yield.
All figures are quarterly or yearly averages, rounded to one decimal point.
That was up from just 32 percent in 1989. The value of a household's stocks is now over twice a family's disposable annual income as opposed to just 0.8 percent of disposable income in 1991. Regional Financial Associates Chief Economist Mark Zandi has done research showing that much of the increase in consumer spending isn't just due to the wealth effect. This helps to explain why the nation's savings rate is so low. This is down from 3.5 percent in 1994.