CNN’s Matt Egan: Consumer Spending Increased By a Solid Amount in July

TRANSCRIPT:

EGAN: "Nice to be here on a summer Friday with some good news, right? Consumer spending, the engine of this economy, it increased by a solid amount in July. You see .5 percent, that’s exactly as expected, and this is a relief because there were some concerns earlier this year when we saw consumer spending drop. And consumer spending, this is 70 percent of the economic output, so when we did see those declines, that did raise concerns about consumers possibly being tapped out and all this confusion over the erratic trade. Also significant, we saw a an upward revision to June. June was a solid number and it was revised even higher. You can see, this is the trend of monthly increases and decreases for retail sales, and earlier this year, again, you do see those concerning jobs. But now look at this, we have two straight months of positive numbers."