Monthly Personal Spending and Income

The Personal Spending and Income numbers were released yesterday showing an increase in income and disposable income, but spending remains flat MoM (Month-over-Month).  I am moving to this new graph (Figure 1) to keep up with revisions and to show possible reductions in disposable income as tax increases come into play in 2011.

Figure 1

Figures 2 and 3 will continue to reflect headline numbers (forecast & actual) to show wins or losses in actual vs. forecast numbers, but will not reflect revisions.  Generally speaking when actual beats forecasts the market rallies (as long as no other negative news is released) and vise-versa for when actual fails to beat forecasts.

Figure 2

Figure 3

Figure 4 shows Personal Savings which increased slightly from the prior month, but lower than Junes high for the 2010.

Figure 4

Personal savings is the hardest to track as revisions seem to be never ending.  Figure 5 shows the revisions that have taken place in the BEA (Bureau of Economic Analysis).  The columns reflect the date the report was derived from (i.e. Augusts data in the August10 column,  was derived from the August report reflecting on the entire years data revised).   As you can see as we progress month to month (rows) revisions are constantly performed until you get to the green highlighted area where it stabilized months later.  This seems like a lot of revisions.

Figure 5