Fed Says Consumer Borrowing Sees Slowest Gain in 5 Months

June 8, 2005 LOS ANGELES -- In April, folks across the country increased borrowing for consumer debt purposes. In a quasi-oxymoronic way, you could say that by increasing borrowing for debt, consumers both followed and broke a trend at the same time. This type of consumer borrowing, for auto loans, etc., saw a 0.7 percent jump in April. And although consumer's increased borrowing, they also realized the smallest growth in this sector in the past 5 months, according to Fed releases Tuesday.

The Federal Reserve announced that April brought-on a $1.26 billion rise in consumer credit, this number falling significantly shy of the $7.5 billion increase that a slew of analysts expected.

Consumer debt currently lives at a record level of $2.13 trillion. Slap another $8 trillion onto that, which is the rough amount Americans owe in home mortgage obligations, and the bottom line appears far from the bottom, doesn't it?

Consumer revolving debt (credit cards, etc.) dropped for a second consecutive month, the Fed said, leaving us at a 0.6 percent rate in April. Noteworthy is the fact that it marked the first back-to-back declination since June and July 2003 ran a 2-month run, consecutively.

Consumer overall demand for non-revolving debt (car loans, recreational vehicles, etc.) climbed at an annual rate of 1.5 percent. -

Fed Says Consumer Borrowing Sees Slowest Gain in 5 Months

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