ERROL BARNETT:
00:00:36
Hmm. Kristin Myers joins me here on set. She is the ETF editor-in-chief at Asset TV. Kristin, good morning. A warm welcome back. What do you make of his case, people dipping into their savings perhaps because they're so confident in the rest of the economy? That's not a thing. That's not a thing. I mean, that's not entirely true. Look, the last time that we saw the savings rate this low, it was revenge spending in April of 2022. People had a lot of money stockpiled in their savings accounts. So they actually started spending a lot that month. The situation is not the same right now. We don't have a lot of Americans with a lot of money in their bank accounts. What we have right now is Americans using credit cards, using more of those buy now, pay later short-term loans. We have a lot of Americans dipping into their 401(k)s, which, by the way, if you're not getting retired, you don't want to be dipping into your retirement accounts. Those are all pure data points that we have right now. And all of that would say that we should be taking the, quote unquote, "doomer view" that the Treasury Secretary said, which is right now that costs are high, Americans are struggling, inflation is outpacing folks' paychecks. They don't have the money that they need to pay for their expenses. And as a result, they have to go to their savings. This is not a confidence play. This is a desperation play. And to your point, the latest inflation report shows prices are at their highest in almost three years. So where specifically are the pain points? Or, I guess, is it everywhere? It's broadly across the board because of the spikes that we saw in oil prices. And when you see oil prices go up, you really see that trickle all over. That impacts logistics, right? Just getting goods from point A to point B is going to be more expensive. Farming is more expensive. Manufacturing, which relies heavily on gasoline and oil, becomes more and more expensive. Travel becomes more and more expensive. And we've already heard a lot of companies say, hey, we're not really interested, even when oil prices come down-- Lowering prices. --in lowering prices, exactly, and giving up some of those revenue gains that we've made over the last couple of months. So unfortunately, I think a lot of Americans are expecting that these prices are going to remain elevated for quite some time. And we've already heard of policymakers saying to companies, we need to really start considering lowering prices-- So your professional advice, maybe hang on to your extra pennies, if you can. If you can. Absolutely, if you can. Yeah. All right, Kristin, the facial expression says it all. Yeah. Great to see you this Friday. Thanks-- Of course.
