Strawberry Blonde's Market Summary: My Math Says "Contraction"

*ZeroHedge article June 10, 2013 ~ "Greek Stocks Enter Bear Market"

*Markets await the German court ruling on the legality of the ECB's OMT program

...we may not have an answer until September

...no bonds have been purchased yet under this program, in spite of the ECB announcing on August 2, 2012

that it would undertake outright transactions in European secondary, sovereign bond markets, as a

financial stability tool...so, only promises without action, to date

*Link to the just-released Pdf file of the G8 communique June 18, 2013: G8 Lough Erne Leaders Communique

Friday, June 1, 2012

Data released on Friday is shown below...the blue box contains prior figures and the red box contains Friday's figures...numbers in the middle are estimates.

Apart from Personal Spending (which tells me that Consumer Debt is still rising), my math adds up to "contraction" in these numbers. You can give it a nicer name like "slowing growth," but it's still "contraction."

I've written about Consumer Debt in these past posts (it's not a pretty picture):

http://www.strawberryblondesmarketsummary.com/2012/03/consumer-credit-levels-higher-than-in.html

http://www.strawberryblondesmarketsummary.com/2012/03/will-american-consumer-save-day.html

http://www.strawberryblondesmarketsummary.com/2012/05/consumer-debt-bubble-looming.html