Economy
Big Pop in Consumer Credit, but Not From Credit Card Use
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The Federal Reserve has released its report on consumer credit for the month of February. In February, consumer credit increased at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 6.5%. Revolving credit, effectively credit cards and merchant credit accounts, decreased at an annual rate of 3.5%. Non-revolving credit, which would include car loans and student loans, rose at an annual rate of 10%.
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This puts the gain at $16.49 billion in February, while Bloomberg was calling for a gain of $14 billion.
February’s total gain may oddly have been muted due to lower spending due to weather in the month, so it will be interesting to see what the March report shows.
The drop in revolving credit was down to $854.2 billion and the non-revolving credit was up to $2.2753 trillion. That brings the total up to $3.1295 trillion among all consumer credit.
Consumer credit almost never moves the needle on the markets. Much of the data is widely known, and the average time period in a mid-month snapshot implies that this data is now a reading of five weeks to seven weeks in the past.
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