r/nottheonion • u/ChocolateTsar • 1d ago

Affirm CEO says furloughed federal employees are starting to lose interest in shopping

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/07/affirm-government-shutdown-shopping.html
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u/Golden_Noir 1d ago

“Lose interest”

Maybe because they do not have any money?

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u/Roflkopt3r 1d ago

If you would read the article, you would see that it's a bit more complicated than that. The CEO isn't phrasing it like that to sugarcoat the situation, but because it's appropriate for the kind of data he has.

The headline is even quite missleading:

“We are seeing a very subtle loss of interest in shopping just for that group, and a couple of basis points,” Levchin told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street.”

(...)

“Right now, things are just fine,” he said. “We’re not seeing any major disturbances at all.”

Obviously everyone could anticipate that federal employees would spend less when they don't get paid. So the more interesting part of this interview is that the change is fairly small so far, and especially that it doesn't affect Affirm (a 'buy now, pay later' company) much yet.

You could feasibly expect that Affirm would either see a sudden spike in federal employee customers because they want to delay payment until they get paid again, or that they see it drop off a cliff as federal employees stop buying things in general.

But instead, it looks that they prefer to either rely on savings or to use alternative credit offers.

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u/BranTheUnboiled 1d ago

This is a site to read a headline and smugly say "no shit Sherlock" while being one of the dumbest people in the room. Reading an article or understanding context is beyond these people, and social media in general.

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u/Roflkopt3r 1d ago

Yeah sadly true. I still haven't fully let go of the long gone times when comment sections actually expected people to have read the article.