Consumers Splurge While Traveling On The Bad Track

Party Time

So many Americans have planned travel to Italy this summer that hotels are fully booked. Airlines are so short of seats, domestic and overseas, that they are advising Americans to defer travel plans until late in the Autumn. Cruise ships have gone from half empty last year to overbooked. Restaurant reservations are virtually impossible to obtain. Business conferences are filling convention halls.  Over 42 million Americans piled into their cars this past weekend, six per cent more than last year. Shop windows are festooned with signs announcing “We Are Hiring.” Economic activity rose in May to its highest pace in thirteen months.

Enter The Gloom Mongers

“There’s a reasonable chance of a recession in the U.S.”, says Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon. “Recession probabilities are going up at this point,” says Larry Summers, Bill Clinton’s treasury secretary now at Harvard. Banking industry leaders need to “anticipate shocks ... because they will be coming”, says IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva. “We believe it is now more likely that the U.S. will enter into a shallow recession later this year,” says Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser.