An article this morning titled ‘Consumer spending, new jobless claims dip’ reports U.S. consumer spending dropped by 0.2% in March, worse than the 0.1% decline economists expected, and that incomes dropped 0.3%, also worse than expected. At the same time the U.S. personal savings rate rose to 4.2% from 4.0% in February while new applications for unemployment aid fell to a seasonally adjusted 631,000 last week, down from 645,000 the prior week. The number of people continuing to draw unemployment benefits jumped to almost 6.3 million, the highest on record dating back to 1967, and higher than economists had expected. The article goes on to list further U.S. job losses announced this week (Textron – 8,300, being 20% of its workforce; GM – 21,000 factory jobs by 2010; Timken – 4,000 by 2010), yet reports that “many analysts predict the recession is easing in the current quarter”. I am not certain how any economist or analyst is of the view that the end is in sight for the U.S. recession any time soon. I have just finished watching President Obama (12:10 EST) present his views on the impending Chrysler bankruptcy. Given what I see as the importance of this, I am going to immediately summarize my thoughts on it in a separate post which will be posted within the next 30 minutes.

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