What if no one bought anything for one day? (loans, transaction, credit card)

[MrBitterness]

What would happen to the economy if every single person in America did not spend one single dollar for one day? No gas, food, luxuries....nothing.

Obviously this would never happen, but what if it did? How would the economy react? What would be the short term and long term ripple effects?

[NCN]

Buying would double the next day.

[texdav]

Likely

[mathjak107]

like those stupid boycott gas for a day e-mails we used to get.

what morons.

[SOON2BNSURPRISE]

Not sure but I still have to eat, drive, and live my life. How many people do you know that boycotted getting gas on a given day but made sure that they had a full tank the night before? Wouldn't you do the same?

[marcopolo]

There would be nobody in line ahead of me when I go to trade the fruits of my labor for some slice of the incredible abundance of goods and services that is the miracle of America.

[DSOs]

All we have to do is NOT use debit/credit cards or take out loans for 1 day--then you'll see some fireworks.

[Nomadicus]

Moot point. It's the sales at the end of the year that count for the years GNP.

[Malloric]

Originally Posted by DSOs

All we have to do is NOT use debit/credit cards or take out loans for 1 day--then you'll see some fireworks.

And by fireworks you mean long lines at the bank?

One day is irrelevant since you're just going to work around it. You'll just go to the bank and withdraw cash from your teller (long lines) for your spending money for the next day and/or put off regular shopping (grocery/dry cleaning/whatever) until the following day if you don't have cash. It'd just be exactly the way people did things before plastic was so common and they forgot their checkbook. An inconvenience.

[mathjak107]

We already went through that here in nyc when the debit and charge cards networks were down after 9/11. The networks stayed out for a day or two .

No biggie, all the transactions were put off and done the next day.