Cam,
the words flowing this way around the teetering us economy is that the American consumer is hocking the house to buy consumer goods. The American consumer, loaded down with debt,is nearing the limits of their endurance with declining house prices and rising unemployment.

The post suggests otherwise.

The scene you describe in this post is at odds with the panic and fear on Wall Street.

Cam,
how do you square the subprime crisis that we hear so much about in Australia with the irrational consumption at the car auction. I'm puzzled.

Land of the free, home of the brave, gravity centre of excess. To think that Veblen died alone and rejected in a shack.

Pam, The people buying collector cars at auction are hardly sub-prime borrowers. Maricopa County is one of the wealthiest counties in the US and when we tried to get restaurant seating on saturday night most places were booked out. Bloom for instance had its earliest opening for us at 9.00pm.

Lyn, When I was in VA I had a commuter car and a fun car which I maintained together. If I had more room there is a high likelihood I would have an American muscle car in the garage for weekends. That puts me well in the Barret-Jackson demographic.

Cam
your comment 'The people buying collector cars at auction are hardly sub-prime borrowers.. But they would have stocks and shares and some would work for the Wall Street investment houses

Pam, Maybe; though I read somewhere that the average American multi-millionaire is a tradesman who runs his own business.

Cam,
the word here (AFR) is that growing headwinds are stalling US consumer momentum, and that many consumers are turning to debt to stay ahead.

What does main street America or Capitol Hill make of Citgroup and Merrill Lynch are being bailed out by Asian and Middle East Governments.

Cam,
sounds like our house with a rare motorbike thrown in. Can't say we've ever aspired to a robosaurus though.

Lyn, Yeh despite the headline grabbing cars of the saturday auction, most cars were in the white collar professional price range on thurs-fri-sun.

Cam.
David Leonhardt says in the New York Times that Americas economic growth

now seems to have depended — in part — on a huge speculative bubble, first in stocks and then real estate, that hid the economy’s rough edges. Everyone from first-time home buyers to Wall Street chief executives made bets they did not fully understand, and then spent money as if those bets couldn’t go bad. For the past 16 years, American consumers have increased their overall spending every single quarter, which is almost twice as long as any previous streak.

He adds that consumer spending kept on rising for the last 16 years largely because families tapped into their newfound wealth, often taking out loans to supplement their income.

Would robosaurus count as a mobile version of gigantism as seen in Gary's lobster?

It's odd that at the same time as we're developing nano technology we're producing robosaurus.