3%

According to Washington and the mass media, they are all touting that our economy is doing well as there has been a 3% increase in consumer spending in January.

Smoke and Mirrors.

While saying that the economy is doing ok by the fact that retail buying increased by 3% in January, it might best serve the public to also include the amount of credit card debt that was used to purchase that 3% uptick. Since the average credit card percentage interest rate is 24.08%. Since credit card debt has increased this past year to its most dramatic increase on record to over $1,000,000,000,000 (Trillion) of credit card debt, I don’t think that saying the economy is doing well with a 3% increase is accurate at all.