Weekly Wrap: Spending up, and more on Europe

Kai Ryssdal discusses the happenings on Wall Street and beyond with Lizzie O’Leary from Bloomberg News and Cardiff Garcia from the blog FT Alphaville.

On the latest news of consumer spending up, while wages are the same. Is this bad news?

Cardiff Garcia: It’s noise. It’s one report. That being said, it’s also part of the longer trend, which is that given where the economy is right now, yeah, incomes have stagnated. And that’s, by the way, for the people who are lucky enough to have jobs. It shows how much we need strong economic growth. Unfortunately, that’s probably not going to happen any time soon either.

On when the economy will get fixed:

Lizzie O’Leary: Oh, I don’t think you’re going to see a big fix anytime soon, particularly because some of the prophets of recession are saying, ‘I’m really sorry to tell you this: We’re there again; we’re there already.’

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