Our annual holiday week 4th of July “snapshot” the nation’s economy commences with this week’s post.
In last summer’s Independence Day overview, we noted a AAA report saying that more Americans were planning to travel, due to the uptick in the economy, even though gas prices were then at their highest levels in years.
Memorial Day’s arrival — and recent departure — marks the unofficial kick off for summer, at least as far as travel plans, imminent graduations, giddy weddings, and other features of what is supposed to be more languorous calendar time.
As we mentioned before, we’ve been getting some brush-ups — a lot of digital brush-ups – -done to the AVPS website. Much as you can’t drive your car around when it’s in the shop, we haven’t been able to blog on our same schedule while our web presence is made more secure and more visually friendly to mobile devices.
Economics has been called an imperfect science by some of its critics, and differing conclusions about the benefits of the recent Super Bowl to the local economy may show that the field does still lack the precision regularly used by, say, astrophysicists.
Another year has come and gone so quickly, and we dare say, it will feel like only 7 or 8 months more have gone by before we’re wishing you a “Happy 2016!” But we get ahead of ourselves. 2015, in all its promise and mystery, still looms ahead. And as you plan your celebrations, have you considered smashing some dishes, or walking around with empty suitcases?
Hopefully there were some “takeaways” at your Thanksgiving — along the lines of turkey, pie, stuffing, and more, making for some nice leftovers for the long holiday weekend. But if those “takeaways” have been eaten up, we have a few more now that some of the returns are in on shopping and consumer trends with this season’s official Black Friday/Cyber Monday kickoff:
While there are always certain bedrock things to be thankful for this time of year — one’s loved ones, good health, warm food on the table — a couple of holiday-themed articles this week underscore that there may be more to give thanks for, this fall, on the economic side, too. Certainly when compared to the more recent Thanksgivings since “The Great Recession.”
Black Friday may not quite be here yet, but in Canada, Thanksgiving has already come and gone, and in China — well, there they’re setting records already for online holiday shopping. We refer to the just-concluded “Singles Day,” in China, which comes on 11/11 — the idea being that all those “ones” emphasize “single-ness.” As Bloomberg News describes it “Singles’ Day, a Chinese twist on Valentine’s Day, was invented by students in the 1990s… When written numerically, the date is reminiscent of bare branches, the Chinese expression for bachelors and spinsters.”
Periodically we bring you indicators, overviews and prognostications about our economy is faring, particularly in the ongoing wake of the Great Recession, whose effects have yet to be fully shaken.
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