Heading Into The Holiday Season, The US Consumer Is Worse Off Than Last Year

As so often happens, one of the biggest surprises of the recent period of broad economic weakness, has been the American consumer, who always somehow manages to come through (or so the official econometric authorities make us believe) and cross a chasm of economic stagnation with shopping bags full of stuff. But while the "consumer" (or his department of truth proxy) has sourced the US economic dynamo in the past several months as Europe imploded, and thus served as a supporting brace for

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