A Standard & Poor's report (via BusinessWeek) doesn't have a lot of faith, like many commenters on this blog, in US consumers paying off debt and buying groceries with their rebate checks. It says they are more likely to go on a spending spree at Best Buy...even if some credit card debt gets paid down."Americans may say that they are going to save the money or use it to pay down debt, but even those who do pay down their credit card balances are likely to build them back up rapidly, in our opinion," says David Wyss, S&P's chief economist.S&P uses this chart to show how consumer electronics in the S&P 1,500 are expected to trend the index's average. We kind of don't understand it, but maybe you can figure it out.Anyway, we would tell you how Best Buy fared in April, but like more and more retailers, they don't report monthly sales.So what is it going to be for consumers? Debt and groceries or plasma-screen TVs and Wii's?

Continue Reading for Free

Register and gain access to:

  • Breaking commercial real estate news and analysis, on-site and via our newsletters and custom alerts
  • Educational webcasts, white papers, and ebooks from industry thought leaders
  • Critical coverage of the property casualty insurance and financial advisory markets on our other ALM sites, PropertyCasualty360 and ThinkAdvisor
NOT FOR REPRINT

© 2024 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.