Economy

Memorial Day as a Litmus Test for the Econony

The AAA issues a forecast of Memorial Day driving each year. It believes the rise will be 1.2% this weekend, helped in part by lower gas prices and an improved economy. The increase may not seem like much, but it is…

By Douglas A. McIntyre
Published May 25, 2012, 6:15am ET · 1 min read

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The AAA issues a forecast of Memorial Day driving each year. It believes the rise will be 1.2% this weekend, helped in part by lower gas prices and an improved economy. The increase may not seem like much, but it is measured against the millions of miles Americans drive. Memorial Day traffic benchmarks are not unlike holiday sales in the fourth quarter of each year. While poor numbers indicate that consumers are worried, robust ones show that Americans believe they have the financial wherewithal to dip into cash or credit reserves.

The second quarter will be two-thirds over when Memorial Day comes. Many economists believe that economic activity slowed in the quarter. Jobless rates on a national basis barely improved. Housing data show that home prices may have bottomed throughout much of America, but the bottom is a soft one. Americans also have started to think about whether Congress will allow tax cuts to lapse, which would hurt the spending power of much of the middle class. Deciding to spend money this weekend will not be easy.

Douglas A. McIntyre

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Douglas A. McIntyre

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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