{"id":519743,"date":"2010-04-07T17:24:37","date_gmt":"2010-04-07T21:24:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/business\/archive\/2010\/04\/consumer-credit-falls-in-february\/38610\/"},"modified":"2010-04-07T17:24:37","modified_gmt":"2010-04-07T21:24:37","slug":"consumer-credit-falls-in-february","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/519743","title":{"rendered":"Consumer Credit Falls in February"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Federal Reserve reported<\/a> that consumer credit fell by 5.6% in February. That erased all of January’s<\/a> 5.2% gain. In the first month of the year, total credit had expanded for the first time since January 2009. Now, that looks like just a blip. March could see higher levels of credit, however. <\/p>\n

Breaking down the credit into its components also reveals that credit shrunk almost across-the-board in February. Revolving credit declined by 13.1% and non-revolving credit fell by 1.6%. The federal government was the only major holder of credit that saw its balance rise, by around 2%. <\/p>\n

This chart below shows how revolving and non-revolving have changed since the start of 2007.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

\"c<\/a><\/p>\n

As you can see, most of total credit’s decline has been due to revolving credit. Non-revolving credit has declined only 1% over that time, while revolving is down 10%. <\/p>\n

Here’s another chart showing the month-over-month change in credit since the start of 2009: <\/p>\n

\"c<\/a><\/p>\n

This demonstrates just how rarely credit has grown during over this period. A smoothed version of that chart, utilizing a 3-month average, tells a similar story: <\/p>\n

\"c<\/a><\/p>\n

March, however, could be different. Retailers are indicating<\/a> that spending was up last month. Considering hourly earnings actually declined by 0.1%<\/a> in March, consumers are likely relying more on credit in order to make those purchases. Pending home sales were also up in February<\/a>, which should raise non-revolving credit. These indicators suggest March has a shot at seeing some credit growth.<\/p>\n



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The Federal Reserve reported that consumer credit fell by 5.6% in February. That erased all of January’s 5.2% gain. In the first month of the year, total credit had expanded for the first time since January 2009. Now, that looks like just a blip. March could see higher levels of credit, however. Breaking down the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1535,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-519743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1535"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=519743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519743\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=519743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=519743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=519743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}