Nouriel Roubini, the economist who says we are facing a long period of stagnation and deflation, cites many reasons why consumers won’t be spending in the next few months (excerpt):

• The US consumer is debt burdened with the debt to disposable income having increased from 70% in the early 1990s to 100% in 2000 and to 140% in 2008.

• The value of housing wealth is now sharply falling by over $6 trillion as home price depreciation will soon be 30% and reach a cumulative fall of over 40% by 2010. Recent estimates of this wealth effect suggest that the effect may be closer to 12-14% rather than the historical 5-7%. And with home prices falling over 30% about 40% of all households with a mortgage (or 21 million out of 50 who have a mortgage) will be under water (negative equity in their homes) with a huge incentive to walk away from their homes.
• Mortgage equity withdrawal (MEW) is collapsing from $700 billion annualized in 2005 to less than $20 in Q2 of this year. Thus, with falling housing wealth and collapsing MEH US households cannot use their homes anymore as ATM machines borrowing against them.
• Employment has been falling for 10 months in a row and the rate of job losses is now accelerating.

Read more on Roubini’s website, RGE Monitor.