For what appears to be the first time on record, Powerball Lottery Sales declined year-over-year. As the following slides show, lottery sales declined 19% in FY14 vs FY13 and even more stunningly reflective of a nation whose disposable income (and hope) is in such short supply, sales in the first half of FY15 are down 40% from the first of FY14. As LaFleurs concludes, this will make it very challenging for most Lotteries to manage their budgets...

Lottery Sales are plunging...

and the first half of 2015 looks even worse...

And it's widespread...

And FY15 looks like a disaster...

But apart from that... The US economy is recovering!!!

h/t Nick Colas at ConvergEx

It's not just the US...

The UK National Lottery has had its worst six months of sales since its launch in 1994, operator Camelot reported today.

Revenue from the various Lottery games slumped to almost £2.3 billion in the period to September 28, down 5.2% on the same time last year.