Credit crunch hurting U.S vehicule sales

"Cars run on gasoline, but car sales run on credit''.

And consumers buy Japanese cars as credit tightens ...

Toyota May Top Ford in August Sales as Demand Fell
Aug. 31 (Bloomberg)

Toyota may post a 2 percent gain this month to displace Ford as the second-biggest automaker in U.S. sales so far this year, according to research firm Global Insight Inc.
Ford's sales fell 12 percent, the average estimate of six analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.
GM's sales declined 5.9 percent in August and Chrysler LLC's dropped 5.8 percent, according to the analyst survey.

In July, U.S. car sales fell 12 percent and the market share held by GM, Ford and Chrysler dropped below 50 percent for the first time. Japanese and South Korean automakers grabbed a record 44.6 percent.

Automakers report August results on Sept. 4.

link

Negative personal savings rate took holidays

Well it was quite of a shock when i came back home this summer.

As you know one of the main economic issue for consumption is the personal saving rate witch is negative, in fact was negative. The Fed now is giving some brand new numbers for 2006/2007 and the balance sheet of the average American appears to be green !

Dunno if Harry Potter is around the corner but as far is now we are in the middle of a real estate market crash and foreclosures are up 92% since july06 so it should be hard to see any significant improvement of the personal finance, here is the charts before and after the "revision".

Before












After