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Econoday Report: Personal Income and Outlays  31, 2008

Personal income in September 2008 rose 0.2% from August.  Real personal consumption expenditures (PCE) fell 0.4% and nominal PCE fell 0.3%.  Real disposable personal income (DPI) rose 0.1% and nominal DPI increased 0.2%. The personal savings rate as a percentage of DPI was 1.3% in September.

 12-Month Percent Change in Consumer Price Index

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

St. Louis Fed: Series: WBAA, Moody’s Seasoned Baa Corporate Bond Yield
Series: WGS10YR, 10-Year Treasury Constant Maturity Rate

According to the latest data from the Federal Reserve, Baa corporate bonds are yielding 4.56% more than 10-year Treasuries. The chart below shows this relationship over the last 40+ years.

Economic Indicators.gov

According to the American Trucking Associations:

The American Trucking Associations’ advanced seasonally adjusted For-Hire Truck Tonnage Index decreased 0.3 percent in July, marking the first month-to-month drop since April. The seasonally adjusted tonnage index equaled 116.2 (2000 = 100) in July, while the not seasonally adjusted index fell 0.1 percent to 119.7.

Econoday has an article out today showing the relationships between the durable goods accounts: shipments, new orders, backlog and inventory. They note that there are now some signs of order cancellations, which demonstrates that the apparent strength shown by strong new orders in recent months was somewhat illusory.

A major risk for the outlook is that aerospace backlogs are making up an unusually high proportion of total backlogs, now at 43 percent vs. 35 percent only four years ago before recovery in the airline sector began to feed a rush of Boeing and Airbus orders. But the airline sector is, as are many other sectors, now slowing, putting pressure on the finances of airlines and raising questions over their commitment to prior orders. To close, the graph below tracks year-on-year percentage changes between unfilled orders for aircraft (black) and total unfilled orders (red). –Mark Pender, Econoday senior financial writer