Speaking of Declining Consumer Spending...

Auto sales - the biggest single chunk of consumer spending - look to be faring quite poorly this spring. The Incredible Shrinking Car Company is selling still fewer cars in the US... but so is everyone else, it seems.

May 1 (Bloomberg) -- Ford Motor Co. said U.S. auto sales fell for the sixth straight month in April as the industry likely declined and gasoline prices rose.

Sales dropped 13 percent to 228,623, the Dearborn, Michigan-based company said today in a statement. Ford's truck sales slipped 5.8 percent, and its car sales were down 24 percent.

General Motors Corp. and DaimlerChrysler AG also are expected to post sales declines in April as rising gasoline prices sapped demand for new cars, according to analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.

..."April is shaping up as a particularly weak month for automotive sales," said Chicago-based Lehman Brothers analyst Brian Johnson in an April 27 report. "Lower consumer confidence, associated in part with the slowdown in the housing market, appears to be taking its toll."

So April seems to have been a bust, at least for one important part of consumer spending. There are still two months left to go in the second quarter of 2007, so anything could still happen to overall consumer spending in the next GDP report. But based on what I wrote this morning about personal income and spending, you can guess how I would bet...


UPDATE: The other major automakers have now reported their April results... and they were pretty grim. The slowdown in consumer purchases of motor vehicles was not brand-specific. Even Toyota was down. And when Toyota sales are down, it's worth taking notice.