This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
First Consumer Confidence Read Since Unemployment Report Upside Surprise, Is Down
The ABC Consumer Confidence index was just released, and is notable as it is the first confidence read since the NFP/unemployment number was released last week by the BLS. And despite all expectations, and proddings by the Comcastic ones that the presumed drop in unemployment would boost sentiment and confidence, the index in fact dropped by two points from -45 to -47. Could people just be smarter, and finally better at seeing through the BS, than the mainstream media gives them credit for?
»
- 3852 reads
- Printer-friendly version
- Send to friend
- advertisements -
At least it's not -52! I shall now shut my eyes, plug ears with my fingers, and repeat the magic words "Better than expected", "Better than expected."
"Could people just be smarter, and finally better at seeing through the BS"
I pray every day that this is the case
"Could people just be smarter..."
No, just less employed, further indebted and all-around poorer. Can you imagine the horror Cinderella felt when the clock struck midnight? The American people are just now realizing that the magic spell is wearing off....
No, just less employed, further indebted and all-around poorer.
I think you've hit on it... it's a lagging indicator.
I think you would be surprised at how much smarter average folks are than many on this site assume. Very angry about the elites and the job they have done and the games they rig as well
What many here miss is that they have familes and obligations and therefore as soon as there is an alternative actual course of action they will optimize their enlightened self interest in a nano second.
Commenting about the "sheeple" like we are all doing on a website is not a call to action....it is more proof to those people that we are just as "elitist" as the people we insist they should not follow. Maybe more elitist and less useful and perhaps less competent. They can see that we knew the game but did not get to power positions....so how does that qualify us as a safer bet than the crooks? Why should a "sheeple" follow some folks who insist they are morally superior and well educated...just based on us saying so?
I am reminded of something I read in the letters/testimony of an Admiral of the Japanese Navy after WWII:
"We went to and we sent our children to your great Ivy League Universities. We lived amongst you. We all did tours of duty and schooling in America. We assumed you would talk your way to accommodation and take the easier road. We knew you did not think much of your own kind. We made the same mistake you did....we forgot that it is the people from the Dust Bowl and Arkansas and Brooklyn and Jersey City who get up after being knocked down and then wade ashore into machine guns when the landing doors open."
The majority of the American people never bought into the fairy tale....they ride the horse that gives them the best option...and none of the wiseacres posting on ZH are giving them a better horse to ride right now...so if we are not leading we have no right to complain that no one is following
imho
Read Atlas Shrugged. That's an option. Drop out. Don't provide any jobs. Don't pay self-employment tax - unless you're required to do so by law (that's for Marla's fascist manifesto about releasing IP's to the brownshirts). Don't pay unemployment tax - unless you're required by law to do so (ibid). Pay your doctors in cash. Don't take on debt on credit cards unless you plan on defaulting. Forbid your children to serve in the Military unless it's to defend our 48 State border. Don't go to shopping malls. Don't fly on U.S. Airlines. Use cash for your local vendors. Never vote for the incumbent (if at all). And for God's sake, don't wade ashore on the Arabian peninsula on behalf of Exxon.
Good luck Wondering (and as John Wooden said, "Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are").
"I think you would be surprised at how much smarter average folks are than many on this site assume. Very angry about the elites and the job they have done and the games they rig as well."
I have no doubt that people are angry and upset. But does this translate into action to protect their own interests and reject the powers that be? No!
The average American considers him or herself to be smarter than average and very independent. That very same average American then allows him or herself to be led around like a bull with a nose ring. As long as we Americans allow the TV (and those who appear on the TV) to do our thinking for us, nothing will change of consequence.
Unfortunately, the American public allows itself to believe the propaganda (coming from both parties) that a third and independent party/candidate is bad for them. All we can hope for is a slow backslide into hell with the current 2 party system. As long as we wish to believe that a third party candidate can't win, a third party candidate can't win. Period.
Smart does not mean erudite or able to cite factoids ....thats the Jeopardy version of "smart"
Smart means practical ...as in practical decision maker.
For the average person that means making the optimal choice of a series of bad choices.
So do you think they really believe the MSM or do you think the majority (not the fringes who follow Oberman, Rush or Beck...those are small slices of America) check into what is available and tune it out? Do you notice that most people make the rational choice not to vote for it makes no difference?
Name a current third party candidate worth following? Name one over the past 50 years?
Ok...so you want them to make choices they do not have
You hold yourself out as seeing a truth they do not....but maybe they see a truth as well....you have not gotten anything accomplished at all...so you are not a choice. You have not demonstrated that your choices are an improvement. Neither has anyone else here including me. Why would we expect followers?
Your circular argument sounds like that of someone who is convincing themselves of the futility of trying right from the start. Set up an unrealistic choice strawman and convince yourself you got them dead to rights. Classic polemical trick. Thats an example of what you think merits followers?
What are you or I doing to reject the powers that be? Posting?
Asking questions and posting our musings is not acting...its showing off (including me) to others who are not acting or doing
Smart is doing. Smart is making choices. Intellectualizing is conversation. Charming and useless
Until we are people of action, we have no right to comment on the choices of others....for our choice is to drop out and preach to the converted
Keeping the consent of the governed is a key trait of leaders....and this subprime generation of financial and political elite has not captured the consent of the governed....but the answer of the average person is to optimize their personal lives....unless and until two conditions are met:
A) It gets bad enough to be worth the risk of change (the majority of these people we are looking down on take care of parents, children and friends....those are choices. They eat the shit sandwiches life brings to back up those choices. So we get to call them sheeple?
B) A viable alternative presents him or herself
Neither is present...so smart people are making smart choices. Taking care of loved ones and waiting.
imho
PS: notice that we are all accusing the average American of being influenced by MSM....but the MSM News is in crisis because no one is watching or buying? Pretty smart choice isn't it? Don't buy.
So who are the smart ones now...us blaming them for being too influenced by a MSM they are not buying...or them considering us as another group of folks "who don't get it? " and thereby are not worth following?
Whats the difference between a Harvard Law Graduate who does not get it and a poster on ZH who does not get it?
Seems to me its smart to be sceptical of both
thank you for saying this...every day i read different sites looking for an answer i can get behind...and finding nothing. i am and my family and friends are angry but we see our Congressional leaders and our President ignoring us when we write or come to Washington for Tea Parties by the thousands. What once could turn a Congress from doing harm means nothing nowadays. They have an agenda and they are cramming it down our throats. I believe the Zerohedge analysis about how Wall Street and the Market are run and I am one of those sitting on the sideline because the game is rigged. What is the solution?
thank you for saying this...every day i read different sites looking for an answer i can get behind...and finding nothing. i am and my family and friends are angry but we see our Congressional leaders and our President ignoring us when we write or come to Washington for Tea Parties by the thousands. What once could turn a Congress from doing harm means nothing nowadays. They have an agenda and they are cramming it down our throats. I believe the Zerohedge analysis about how Wall Street and the Market are run and I am one of those sitting on the sideline because the game is rigged. What is the solution?
The solution is continued and active pressure on members of congress to achieve the following:
1. recognize that we are suffocating in debt and said debt must be reduced and not reinflated.
2. recognize that the Fed's policies of zero interest rates for an extended period of time is a recipe for disaster.
3. the policies of the obama admin as controlled by summers and geithner will wreak havoc on the future well being of the USA.
4. an echo bubble has been created and must be stopped pronto.
The solution is an Armed Tea Party. Even politicians can't ignore 1,000,000 people marching on Washington with guns. And even if they do, you are ready to take it to the next level.
Sharp insight. Very sharp.
Well said, Wondering.
Over the past 2 months or so, I have asked various business people I know (mainly SE USA, in the trenches kind of folks) 2 things:
1) Seeing any "Green Shoots" lately? Of the 8 I asked, NONE saw any improvement.
2) Have you bought ANY stocks lately? Of the 7 I asked, only ONE had.
OK, real unscientific, my friends are for the most part upper middle class, but still, they mirror most comments I have seen here.
That last UE report was an anomoly, it didn't boost my confidence but skepticism. we'll see.
Could people just be smarter,
You know what I always find interesting and rather amazing (and encouraging from my point of view)? Over the years, and definitely at this current point in time, national polls have shown that the USA deficit/debt is consistently one of the top matters of concern for Americans.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_pgcapIisc
Smarter than the msm? never... those media folks are the smartest. otherwise they wouldn't be on the tv.
Those that read ZH are smarter. That much I know, but was it enough to move the needle? Let's hope it will be one day.
"No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public."
-- Henry Mencken
Bullshit.
The American People are a lot smarter than the elites. Just check the polls, because I believe the polls are running better than the policy: the American People have been against the Iraq fiasco for years, against illegal immigration and off-shoring of jobs. They are now against the Fed, Bernanke, bailouts and all the other bullshit. But what are they really supposed to do? They get two political options that are both rancid, because the political deck has been stacked against them for decades.
Soon, they'll wake up and realize revolution is the only answer.
The utter insanity and comically bizarre actions of Obama and his ship of fools administration will be the straw that breaks the camel's back.
The American people say they are frustrated with a financial system hijacked by greedy bankers, and additionally upset that Bush dunked a few mass murderer's heads under water....Sooo, Obama responds by pointing a gun at the head's of U.S. citizens who don't buy health insurance and making them buy overpriced crap they don't need or want, or pay huge fines. Yeah, that's logical.
The only subtle justice is that the "open minded" young people between 21-39 with decent incomes who voted for Obama are the ones who are going to reamed under Obama's health new system.
lagging indicator...
Employement and sentiment are not lagging indicators anymore. They directly affect the econom and future business. In a depression, the economy ,stock markets and the above are in 100% sync. That's why it's a death spiral
theres a big group of people, who are smarter, because of ZH. where else can you find this concentration of info and commentary?
Creditability takes another hit thanks to Ben and Tim's excellent indenture.
people aren't smarter, they are just at the front line of this mess. They know because they are living in this crap
"Could people just be smarter,"
Smarter? Nope! This mess is directly effecting the masses and that’s the only reason people care. Sociality has gotten to the point that unless a major problem interrupts their lives financially, physically or psychologically, they could care less. One just has to look at what We as a people have allowed OUR elected officials to get away with year after year after year.
What does it take to unscrew their tear filled eyes away from The Biggest Loser? How far will they be pushed into the abyss before they wake up from their msm induced comas? How much damage will they accept before they realizes that the new boss is always the same as the old boss?
I was self employed for 18 years (construction) and I’ve been off the grid for the past 5 (well as far as I can get). I barter when ever I can, and pay/receive cash when I can’t. I use and support my local credit union (I haven’t even been inside a bank for at least 4 years. 90% of my backyard is a garden and half my front is fruit trees. 40+% of my monthly income goes toward silver and has been for going on 3 years now.
Am I ready? Nope, not really. But at least I’ll be better than most my neighbors that can’t seem to wrap their heads around anything outside of The Amazing Race. Shame really, they get all fired up for a reality show, but have no grasp of reality…
adding that one to my list of favorite quotes
I'm sick of main stream media. Just freaking sick of it.
This story means NOTHING. .6 percent same store sales MEANS NOTHING!!!!!
NOW LETS MAKE A STORY OUT OF IT.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/McDonalds-sales-take-hit-from-apf-35240632...
"the index in fact dropped by two points from -45 to -47."
-47 to -45
I think that should be the other way around but don't quote me I struggled with the CAPTCHA
So, how did ABC contact those who no longer have a telephone and/or internet service, due to financial distress? Please tell me how these people - numbers growing every day - have an opinion in this Confidence Poll?
AH, you hit the nail on the head - now only those with jobs and internet and phone are being included in the data set. If you no longer work or do not have a phone you do not count.
I swear by the mud below my feet
You can't raise a Caine back up when he's in defeat
There's only one way to tell if Americans are wising up:
Who did they vote for in the last election and what incumbents will they vote for in the next.
If they voted for incumbents last year, that's strike one.
If they vote for their incumbent next year, that's strike two.
If they do not express their frustration, hopelessness, and hatred for the likes of Goldman Sucks's Lord Blankfein, hundreds of billions of dollars of bonuses paid for with THEIR money, that's strike three, and out. Game over.
There are few, if any, sure things in this world but I am willing to bet, if I could find a counterparty to my bet, that incumbents will be returned to office, and worst of all, those incumbents on the Banking Committee will be looking forward to another term. Frank, Dodd, and the rest will survive, prosper and celebrate the idiocy of their constituents in returning them to office.
Stick a fork in it. Nothing but total chaos, a breakdown of all institutions, corporate, academic, and governmental will suffice. And that can be forestalled for a very long time.
I have been asking my family, friends and associates the
following questions:
Have you noticed any city maintenance vehicles out and about?
Have you noticed the parking lots at any tool/industrial rental store? (no room for customer parking, all the equipment is back and not rented).
Have you noticed the tire tread on cars and trucks parked at the grocery store or at Walmart?
Have you noticed the empty police cars parked in strategic
places all over town.
How about all the abandoned commercial work sites?
People with no credit left and declining income do not possess a lot of confidence.
I talk to school admins in a rich county in NoVA and hear stories of every other person having a layoff or some kind of job issue.
Tysons Corner mall was very light traffic this weekend for an Xmas season. Just one or two data points, but things are atypical.
If you're an average worker out there, you cannot have confidence...I'm on the toilet and hearing FTEs in this company talking about whether to take the 3mo voluntary severance or roll the dice for the layoff + 1 month.
As long as that type of zeitgeist permeates, there's not going to be much consumer confidence.
Maybe it's time Oprah crank out some more promotion of 'The Secret' and get Chopra to spin his bullshit magical thinking in order to improve consumer confidence. We are all so negative. Think happy thoughts everyone and we will return to bliss. Sounds crazy but this is the mentality of not only the herd but the economic brain trust.
We don't have to have a revolution to "do something".
Step 1 -- Just open an account with a small, local bank. Withdraw your money from the majors. If 5% of depositors do that they'll be out of business in a week.
Step 2 -- Don't buy anything except life essentials. If 5% of consumers do that this Christmas, it will go down as the second worse on record.
If significant numbers of people go on strike this way, change will come swiftly. The government will be forced to listen to people instead of lobbyists.
+∞
It's amazing that so many don't get just how simple those two steps really are.
Call it the people have realized all the "change you can believe in" they heard in the main stream media (ABC ie All Barack Channel etc) was just slick marketing put together in an even slicker packaging.
The only change was the slot machine of wall street flowing down....congrats to them I mean if you cant make money making wide markets in a zero interest rate environment and have a govt backing to borrow against then you pretty much have a iq of about 20.
Thanks for the post. I hadn't yet seen that consumer confidence report.
I'm not surprised. Unemployment, both in the U.S. and the world as a whole, marches ever higher because the field of economics doesn't account for the relationship between population density and per capita consumption.
Following the beating the field of economics took over the seeming failure of Malthus' theory, economists adamantly refuse to ever again consider the effects of population growth. If they did, they might come to understand that once an optimum population density is breached, further over-crowding begins to erode per capita consumption and, consequently, per capita employment.
And these effects of an excessive population density are actually imported when a nation like the U.S. attempts to trade freely with other nations much more densely populated - nations like China, Japan, Germany, Korea and a host of others. The result is an automatic trade deficit and loss of jobs - tantamount to economic suicide.
Using 2006 data, an in-depth analysis reveals that, of our top twenty per capita trade deficits in manufactured goods (the trade deficit divided by the population of the country in question), eighteen are with nations much more densely populated than our own. Even more revealing, if the nations of the world are divided equally around the median population density, the U.S. had a trade surplus in manufactured goods of $17 billion with the half of nations below the median population density. With the half above the median, we had a $480 billion deficit!
If you‘re interested in learning more about this important new economic theory, then I invite you to visit either of my web sites at OpenWindowPublishingCo.com or PeteMurphy.wordpress.com where you can read the preface, join in the blog discussion and, of course, buy the book if you like. (It's also available at Amazon.com.)
Pete Murphy
Author, "Five Short Blasts"