Monday, October 10, 2011

Frugal Forever

Title of a Wall St Journal piece. The gist of the story is that financially pressed Americans are buying more store brands and less national brands. Catchy and all, but as a regular buyer of store brands, I gotta say, they ain't THAT cheap. True, you save a few percent over a national brand, but somehow I don't think that small difference is going to swing the country into or out of Great Depression 2.0. Must have been a slow day at the Journal.
More to the point, consumer spending used to be 70% of the US GNP. Of that huge amount of spending, much of it is deferrable. Consumers worried about losing their jobs or layoffs, will defer buying new cars, appliances, clothing, lawn care, housewares, even Christmas gifts. About the only things people have to are groceries. And that's all most of us are buying. I can see this when I visit Home Depot or Lowes. The aisles are empty of customers.

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