"Running out of that buffer"
5/28/202625 min
The personal savings rate fell to just 2.6% in April — a low not seen since June 2022, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. That means Americans have, on average, less cash leftover at the end of the month. Gas and grocery price inflation are partially to blame. Also in this episode: Office real estate looks a little K-shaped, one city tries to relieve budget problems with trademarked merch, and Kai breaks down the April PCE report and Q1 GDP revision.
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Transcript preview
First 90 secondsKai Ryssdal· Host0:00
[upbeat music] The macroeconomic news of the day today brought to you by the letters G, D, and P, and P, C, and E. From American Public Media, this is Marketplace. [upbeat music] In Los Angeles, I'm Kai Ryssdal, Thursday today, 28 May. Good as always to have you along, everybody.
Lara Veldkamp· Guest0:31
I'm Lara Veldkamp, and I'm a professor at Columbia Business School.
Tara Sinclair· Guest0:35
I am Professor Tara Sinclair. I'm chair of the economics department at the George Washington University.
Kai Ryssdal· Host0:40
We made some calls this morning to help us sort out the two big economic data points of the day. PCE, the April personal consumption expenditures price index, which is a fancy way to say inflation. Also, an update to first quarter gross domestic product.
Lara Veldkamp· Guest0:55
There's a lot to unpack here. It's not very good news. Inflation looks too high, growth looks too low, and neither of those are the direction that we wanted to see.
Tara Sinclair· Guest1:03
The first one I opened was the GDP report, and I went, "Uh-oh," uh, because, you know, downward revisions, we don't like those.
Kai Ryssdal· Host1:11
We'll start where Professor Sinclair started, Q1 economic growth. That is what this GDP report measures. It fell four tenths percent from an earlier estimate to 1.6% annualized.
Tara Sinclair· Guest1:22
The next thing I did was scroll down and was like, "Okay, where did it come from?" And seeing that it came from both the consumption and investment side, those two sides that really tell us