The American Consumer Calls The Top
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DPC “Grant’s Tomb. Rubber-neck auto on Riverside Drive, New York” 1911 Hey! Who said economics can’t be fun?! How is it not absolutely brilliant that
[See the full post at: The American Consumer Calls The Top]For the most part the concon number reflects the stock market. People have been well trained to equate the stock market with the economy. 07 and 08 was an anomaly when stocks were strong and concon sank.
This is a month old but still applies.
Concon has been in a downtrend for 14 yearsTo be perfectly fair we are now just above the down sloping trend line connecting the highs. I’m not sure that the concon numbers actually contain any information however. It’s just a sort of derivative of feelings. Feelings and expectations do not move the economy, money does.
In the above post the chart was of the Conference Board’s concon survey, in October. All the excitement now is about the University of Michigan/Reuters survey for November.
I looked up the Conference Board’s November report and dang if it did not fall from 94.1 to 88.7.
https://www.conference-board.org/data/consumerconfidence.cfmAmericans are quite confident that the USA’s waste-based economy can continue for quite some time. And they probably assume that the extraction of oil is basically a cost-free activity.
rapier, it’s funny how consumer confidence differs from consumer sentiment, isn’t it?
Except that in an economy where everything is a lie, I don’t believe a word of it.
Consumers are apparently so confident Christmas shopping is down 11%? When gas has plunged 25%? So confident they continue to leave the stock market in droves as they cash out retirements to survive? So confident housing sales are remain low and are turning down? So confident in the job market that the participation rate continues to fall month after month, year after year, and hasn’t been this low since 1978? So confident that 1 in 5 Americans must have forgotten their situation is so fragile they’re on food stamps?
No, somehow I’m guessing that the government may–just may–be bending the numbers a teeny little bit.
It’s all about the narrative now: the narrative demands that interest rates rise, so some sort of facts needs to appear to justify what has already been decided. Is deciding your course ahead of time, regardless of or in defiance of the facts, considered insanity or stupidity?
In any case, the one thing it isn’t, is reality. There’s no need to comment on facts or on news that are so eggregiously, so transparently false. Next time, ask the ConCon board to call zip codes outside of K Street.
Consumer confidence? Another lying statistic compiled by a politically motivated State institution? And we are to fall for it?
Whatever.
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