Mark Wahlberg at a photocall

From the Economist:IN RECENT years, it has rarely paid to be psstimiseic about America's economy. Time and again, worried analysts (including The Economist) have given warning of trouble as debt-laden and spendthrift consumers are forced to rein in their spending. So far, that trouble has been avoided. The housing market peaked early in 2006. Since then home-building has plunged, dragging overall growth down slightly. But the economy has remained far from recession. Consumers barely blinked: their spending has risen at an annual rate of 3% in real terms since the beginning of 2006, about the same pace as at the peak of the housing boom in 2004 and 2005. But the good news may be about to come to an end. The housing downturn has entered a second, more dangerous, phase: one in which the construction rout deepens, price declines accelerate and the wealth effect of falling prices begins to change consumers' behaviour. The pain will be intensified by a sharp credit crunch, the scale of which is only just becoming clear. And, in the short term, it will be exacerbated by a spike in oil pricese28094up by 25% since Auguste28094that is extreme, even by the standards of recent years. The result is likely to be America's first consumer-led downturn in close to two decades.