Credit card usage tumbles in January

Tuesday, 12 March 2013

The RBA released January credit card statistics today and there was a big seasonal fall in monthly spending but usage still climbed 4.5% year on year in a reasonable sign for consumer spending:

However monthly balances continued their rollover and show a very distinct looking top, rather suggesting folks are using the credit card for arbitrage, not borrowing from the future:

It will be interesting to see how this quite unusual shrinking of balances plays out.

About the author

David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.