The Rate of Contraction of Consumer Durable Purchases Slows

Despite the NBER declaring the recession over, the best that Rick Davis at Consumer Metrics, who tracks consumer durables in real time, can say is that the rate of contraction has slowed. Here's the latest from his most recent report:

 Over the 45 days from August 1 to September 15, our Weighted Composite Index has improved substantially, rising from recording a year-over-year contraction rate in excess of 9% to recently registering a contraction rate much nearer to 3%. This is the largest positive movement that we have seen since late 2009. That said, it is important to remember that consumer demand for discretionary durable goods is still contracting, albeit at a slower rate. But the improvement has stopped (at least temporarily) the decline of our 91-day trailing quarter average (our Daily Growth Index):

Our Daily Growth Index reached a -5.86% contraction rate on September 12, which was fully 97% as bad as the worst contraction rate reached during the "Great Recession of 2008" (-6.02% on August 29, 2008). A calendar quarter of comparable GDP growth has occurred among only 1.29% of all quarters of U.S. GDP growth recorded by the Bureau of Economic Analysis of the U.S. Department of Commerce, since the spring of 1947...

One of the tools that we have used to monitor the 2010 contraction event is a chart that we call our "Contraction Watch," which overlays graphically the day-by-day progression of the current 2010 contraction onto the "Great Recession of 2008":

In the above chart the two contractions are aligned on the left margin at the first day during each event that our Daily Growth Index went negative, and they progress day-by-day to the right, tracing out the daily rate of contraction. This chart conveys important information about the 2010 event, in particular how it differs in profile from the "Great Recession of 2008." It has now lasted three weeks longer than the "Great Recession" and is perhaps only just now forming a bottom. Furthermore, that bottom is very nearly as low as the one experienced in 2008. Even if the 2010 contraction immediately starts to retrace the recovery pattern seen in 2008, we should expect at least another 120 days or so of net contraction before the consumer portion of the economy is growing once again.

The rest of Rick's report is here. Keep in mind that Rick does not view things from an Austrian perspective. I would classify him as quasi-Keynesian. His strength for Austrians is not in his theory but in the cold hard data he collects which is light years ahead of what the government collects.