US consumer credit up but spending may slow, positive European data marred by fall in German exports

Outstanding US consumer credit continued to rise in May. MarketWatch reports:

American borrowers pushed up overall outstanding consumer credit by 2.4%, or $4.4 billion, to $2.173 trillion, the Fed said Monday. Credit cards and other forms of revolving debt jacked up the overall number. U.S. consumers added $6.7 billion in revolving debt in May, up 10% from the prior month to a total of $812 billion. Nonrevolving debt like automobile loans, meanwhile, fell by 2%, or $2.2 billion, to $1.36 trillion...

In a separate report Monday, the Commerce Department said inventories at U.S. wholesalers rose 0.8% in May while sales increased 1.6%. The inventory-to-sales ratio fell to a record-low 1.15 in May. The typical wholesaler has about 35 days of sales on hand.

But mortgage finance company Freddie Mac thinks the housing market will cool and slow US consumer spending. From Reuters:

"In the second half of the year, the markets, businesses, and consumers will need to adjust to an economy in transition from above trend growth driven in large part by a housing boom to below trend growth exacerbated by higher energy prices and a cooling housing market," it added.

In releasing June retail sales data, SpendingPulse, a retail data service of MasterCard, suggests that there has already been some cooling in spending. From Reuters:

U.S. retail sales, excluding autos, rose on a seasonally adjusted basis in June, but at a slow enough rate to suggest retail sales are weakening overall, according to final data released by SpendingPulse on Monday.

Final seasonally adjusted sales for June totaled $284.8 billion, up 6.2 percent from a year earlier, said SpendingPulse.

Final June seasonally adjusted sales rose 0.4 percent from May. That compares with May final sales, which rose 0.2 percent from April...

June total sales excluding auto and gasoline sales rose 6.1 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from a year earlier, a rate which has generally been slowing and reflects the impact of high gasoline prices, SpendingPulse said.

The UK economy, however, reminds us that things can always turn around relatively quickly. Yesterday, the Department for Communities and Local Government reported that house price inflation picked up to 5.6 percent in May from 5.1 percent the month before, while the Office for National Statistics said that producer output prices rose 3.3 percent on the year, the fastest rate since last September, and core output prices, which exclude food, drink, tobacco and petroleum, were up 2.9 percent, the strongest rate in one and a half years.

Meanwhile, on the continent, French industrial output surged 2 percent in May, but otherwise, the news was not so good. Exports from Germany fell 1.5 percent in May while research group Sentix's euro zone index of investor sentiment fell to 21.8 in July from 22.2 in June.

But research from ABN Amro suggests that the outlook for the French economy may not be so good after the result of Sunday's World Cup final. From MarketWatch:

The bank found that past figures show economic growth among soccer world champions outstrips growth in the losing finalist country, with an average "bonus" of 0.7% additional economic growth versus the prior year's gain. The losing country -- this year, France -- tends to suffer an average 0.3% loss compared with the previous year's growth.

On the other hand, if there is any validity to the findings, it looks like the Italians will have more to cheer about.