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Gallup Finds Consumer Confidence Declines Materially On Surging Gas Prices, Budget Battles And S&P Decline
After Gallup confirmed that the February NFP data was doctored just enough to allow the Fed to decide what to do with March employment data (should QE3 be determined necessary, look for a huge miss to expectations), today the polling company confirms that recent 3 year highs in consumer confidence were an inflection point. "Gallup's Economic Confidence Index worsened to -24 in February from -21 the prior month as Americans' optimism about the U.S. economy receded from a three-year high reached in January. Gallup's weekly economic confidence data show that consumer optimism hit a new weekly high in mid-February but fell sharply during the second two weeks of the month. As a result, the decline in optimism reported for the month is an average bolstered by relatively high confidence early in February. Recent events are not encouraging as far as the economy is concerned. Soaring gas prices, budget battles in Washington, D.C., as well as in many states, and recent declines on Wall Street suggest that Gallup's most recent weekly measure of -29 for the week ending March 6 may more accurately reflect current consumer confidence than February's monthly average." This is very surprising: don't consumer still not realize that the only thing that matters is core CPI, and that is indicating deflation is still a huge threat to Wall Street's record bonuses? What is just as surprising is that the deterioration in outlook was spread evenly across social classes, age groups and political affiliations.
From Gallup:
Gallup's Economic Confidence Index is based on two
questions. One measures consumers' perceptions of current economic
conditions and shows them to be the same in February as in January, with
42% of Americans rating current economic conditions "poor."
The second Index component asks Americans to rate the outlook for the
U.S. economy. In February, 38% said economic conditions are "getting
better," down from 41% a month earlier. However, this decline follows a
January optimism level that tied for the highest since Gallup Daily
tracking began in January 2008.
Optimism Declines Across Demographic Groups
More than half of Americans aged 18 to 29 and of Democrats say
economic conditions are getting better. This makes them the most
optimistic among key demographic groups. At the other end of the
spectrum are Republicans, with 27% saying things are getting better, and
older Americans, with 33% of those 55 to 64 and 30% of those 65 or
older saying this.
The largest drops in optimism in February were among those 65 or
older (down five points) and among upper-income Americans and those aged
50 to 64 (down four points each). Only younger Americans saw no drop in
optimism between January and February.
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I'm bullish on pessimism.
suckers catching on? don't worry, there's a new one born every minute.
http://covert2.wordpress.com
General folk I talk to are generally optimistic and think the economy is improving...no major concerns. They are aware of the gas price but see it as another temporary nuisance and have no thoughts that this could be a structural shift. They also see the budget and deficit as political stuff.
Generally, folks I talk to are back or moving back into the stock market and believe the recession is done.
Even the smart general laymen I speak to have no idea what is going on behind the scenes to make the economy improve and the implications ($150 billion monthly deficit, POMO, SOMA, peak oil, peak debt, peak everything, blah blah). I find this a bit scary as the the circles I move in (lawyers, professionals, self employed business owners, etc) are totally absorbed by their jobs, their lives, and have no interest or capacity to see the big picture and really are not overly concerned or prepared for anything other than a continuation of life as we know it - or I'm a fool and should just buy into monetary and fiscal forces I do not fully understand but fear.
I have to go along with you on that one. I suppose it depends on where you live. Being in a tourist town, I see a mixed picture, but overall damn few have any clue whatsoever what kind of monsters lurk behind the curtains.
They, Americans, have always believed that the sun will come out tomorrow, but we ain't in Kansas no more Dorthy.
I fully expect that Mr. Ben will rework the CPI catagories so it shows what he wants. Maybe he can add the US dollar to the mix, that way he can be sure the index stays down for the long term.
hambone
I believe that you have accurately captured the current awareness situation for almost all Americans. The view from the mid west is the same as well.
As always people have focused on their daily professional, jobs and family lives. The economy is something taken for granted and will always be there. Finance, budgets, etc, are things that they don't think about. There is this "someone will take care of it mentality."
Dont know what it will take to wake people up, but it would have to be something big. The economic reality of the last 3 years do not apply to most, as they still have jobs. This is especially true with those that work for state, county, city and Federal work force.
So until that BIG event hits, don't expect any meaningful change in citizen understanding or behavior.
Meme and NWO,
I think Todd Harrison at Minyanville described it as "selling the car crash and buying cancer". I think that nicely describes the Fed's and governments response to peak debt. Slowly, insidiously turning the heat up on the frog in the pot rather than tossing him in to the boiling water. People adjust fairly quickly and two years ago the gas story was a big deal but the shock value at these levels is already lost. People are now becoming accustomed to $3.50 gas, higher food costs, etc. Doesn't mean the implications won't be there but people can adapt to anything...it's really the TPTB that can't adapt to a world where their assets suddenly become worthless and they are unable to get printed money for nothing so they can lend for a riskless "spread".
BTW - fully agree w/ Martenson in his article we are set for another market "shock" in the absence of QE3 to pave the way for QE infinity. There is no market for $4-$5T in Treasuries absent the Fed's printing...but no other way to get that decree than create the problem and then offer to solve it.
OMG... securities are declining? Blythe! Help!
Gas is up! Consumer confidence is down!
Print Ben Print!
Props to Gallup for not giving in to the US Gov propaganda machine.
WHERE THE FUCK DO THEY FIND ALL THOSE PEOPLE FOR THEIR POLES?!
Poland?
(poles != polls)
you saved me the effort. good theraputic laught, though. his Flemish/English is often interesting.
The local college for girls looking for work. As far as my experience, they are always just doing it to get through college.
Just a little dip in the chart, a pimple really. Nothing a little BLS acne cream won't clear up.
"Happy days are here again, the sky is blue................"
The BLS [Bureau of Lying Shitheads] means nothing to me, as they are now irrelevant. Why in the hell do we not get our unemployment data directly from each state? All it would take is a two minute phone call each week.
I'll tell you why: because "they" think we can't handle the truth of 15% unemployment, that's why.
We can handle any truthful pimple as long as we use the new and improved BLS acne cream vanishing formula.
Actually, I think Americans could handle being told there was a 15% unemployment rate in America. Sadly only 50% of Americans can point out the USA on a damn globe...that is not a joke! So they just might think the problem was somewhere else.
Now, maybe if you say 24%, which it is, they might get scared because then the unemployment rate would look like the rest of the world and it would not matter where your butt was sitting or if you even knew what a globe was.
We are burning the candle at both ends, but don't tell anyone.
I note that confidence declines more rapidly across the older population. Us old guys remember the late seventies and early eighties, when you couldn't buy a freaking job.
Perhaps we see the reality of what is hapenning, and understand that this "recovery" is not organic, and will crash and burn once the invisible hand of Ben Berspanky is pulled away.
Wait for it folks, 'cause its a 'comin. And that right soon.
As a member of one of those "younger" groups I don't remember the Carter administration. Once it became clear that our current situation would put us into Carter II, I called my Dad and asked him how it was. He paused for a moment to reflect and then said "not good."
The older generation remembers that math is a science and lying is bad. You know, Peter and the Wolf and all that?
They are also united in feeling that the next generation will be worse off than they were - a truly gutwrenching realization.
They have lived from 'happy days are here again' (h/t CD) to 'this is the end'. what a lousy way to go out ...
many thanks for clarity and reason
Looks like the banks are loving this data today.
KRE about to breakout of a 3 month trading range.
or not; as the case may be. S&P 500 topped out on Feb.22nd. You are now in a bear market; surprise, surprise.
younger americans saw no difference in optimism as they remain on the hypnosis of Obama's narcotic effect which is clouding their vision of economic reality preventing them from coming to terms that they are largely responsible for paying the trillions in Obama debt service over the coming years
confidence up as record sales at the store continue after xmas
i find some perky economic leg in the fact that the Gasoline RBOB FUT is now @ USd 297.00, down a big handful or two, % wise, from last week, before the "rumor" that prez0 was gonna throw the Strategic Reserve at the FED's monetizing.
GOOD FOR YOU, MR. OBAMA! slewie kudos 4 The Man!
sell that sticky goo right out the freaking door @ $105-115/bbl and re-load w/ WTI in time to do it again for the 4th of July!
Now! PUT THE FUKING FOOD COMMODITIES ON CASH or slewie's gonna hit on Michelle, dammit!!!
What S&P decline?
For those lacking any critical thinking skills whatsoever, TPTB offer you Gallup.
Gallup will tell you what to think. Social engineering at its finest.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_poll
Gallup asks 10 questions..
the way the 10 questions are written will effect how they are answered.
for instance..
should we send the army to Libiya? the naswer being no..
should we allow the African Mercenaires to gun down un-armed civilians in the Streets of Libiya? no..
and so on.. I am not a professional writer so imagine a much more refined product being presented on just the right day after just the right preface news speak cycle and you can really predict exactly what the braoder slice will say before even asking.
Psy-Ops not just for the other side any more...
WAIT!!!! more hookie pokkieness from that Zero Hedge group of crazies!!! makin shit up as they go along.. boogiemen in the goobermint and such is un-american!
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/another-runaway-general-army-deploys-psy-ops-on-u-s-senators-20110223
SPX
Accelerated channel...will it complete the Diamond Top?
http://www.zerohedge.com/forum/99er-charts-0
930 SPX?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsGflzPXvQU
"O" my bad.. I saw SPX and jumped the gun.. so to speak.
These numbers are the optomistic slant too.
the plebs are concerned about food, and gas, and moar war...how quaint
"before the Twelve Tablets plebeians were forbidden to know any laws, but were still punished for breaking them"
***** "Gallup Finds Consumer Confidence Declines Materially On Surging Gas Prices" *****
I wonder what is going to happen when the Seepeople open thier eyes to see that the World is out of Cheap Oil and that $4 bucks a Gallon was cheap?
Cheap Oil Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYuLjGQQ-jg
America trading Arms for Cheaper Oil Prices (we would not want the sheepeople getting freeked out at the retail level) http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304011604575564510572763970.html
Nope, all of us at Zero Hedge are all Loonies... looking for the boogieman in everything...
Like the FED pumping the markets... that would be communism... damn you zero hedge crazies!!!!
http://www.newyorkfed.org/markets/tot_operation_schedule.html
and thusly the sheep continue to get hair cuts, daily.
But it is our fault ya'll.. we did not make sure that all Americans were provided a reasonable education.
You assume they will accept that resources are finite, and not just jump on the bandwagon of the polician with the most meaningless, yet easily consumable slogan, pretending to "solve" the problem.
DRILL BABY DRILL!!!11eleventyone!11
Drill!! Baby!!! Drill!!!!
and we need more oil paint for our anti-abortion signs.. bring me the good stuff none of that latex tree hugger crap!
Praise Jesus!!!
God gave everyone free will and then man / woman spends his whole life trying to reign in other men / women free will.. what God gave everyone, people spend a life time trying to take away. but they are good Christians!!! doing Gods Work... it is Gods Will that they take away Gods gift of free will. fucking posers!!!
JW, you should send that rant to those nice people at that Baptist Church in Kansas that likes to picket graves of dead soldiers. Clue them in that Leviticus was the Hebrew old Testament, and since then (like after Jesus), God was not angry anymore. You know, what would Jesus do?
The New American Bible is just being released, maybe just in time for a new world order.
DRILL BABY DRILL
red hair and all a siren song..
Escape: it couldn't hurt, drilling more of our own oil could help jobs, lower costs , what am i missing?
a brain?
a well thought plan of action?
money in your bank account?
gold in your safe?
extra ammo?
a hawt wife or boyfriend (whatever blows up your skirt)?
should I go on about things you are missing?
ok, I will be serious...
we have oil... there is a lot of oil every where... here, there and every where.. and I am being dead serious when I say oil is every where...
what we are lacking is cheap oil..
lite sweet crude.
that is burried 50 feet deep beneath the desert that is 1 mile from the ocean.. and the pipe lines and ocean terminals are already in place.
that is what we, you and I are lacking.. all of us are lacking really.
what we have is the gulf of mexico..
Hurrincanes.
10,000 feet to the ocean floor.
10,000 feet of drilling thru rock to get to the oil..
puming the oil up thru the rock and the thru the ocean...
ok, lets talk alaska.. whos pipe lines are maxxed out.. you couldnt fit an extra bbl into those pipe lines but lets say we could for fun? under the frozen perma frost.. there is a layer of gas.. so really the land up north os more like a floating island bomb.
but aisde from that.. we would have to drill for it.. steel breaks in whatever something minus zero degrees tempreture.. and up there it is beyond that magic number.
the costs of drilling... are what our, mine and your problem is.
we are not out of oil.. no where near it.. we are out of cheap oil. which means the entire economic model that the entire world trades on is fucking fucked by 100's of %..
watch this video.. it will get you in the mood. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYuLjGQQ-jg
don't forget that there is 700 Billion barrels of oil off the coast of Brazil that the Chinese are getting to drill for with the Brazilians. The Chinese are also getting to drill off the north coast of Cuba.
Both are deep water, but they can handle any spills that sneak up on them.
Maybe a good thing, the Chinese are known for making stuff available to the world for cheap!
There's nothing wrong with a higher level of energy independence, but ANWR is basically only about 6 months supply, and the much fabled Lindsey Williams Alaskan North slope is - on top of being bullshit - also, according to himself, nowhere near enough to offset the decline elsewhere.
According to Williams ("The Energy Non-Crisis"), Gull Island (not documented by anyone else) would add about 2mbpd at a time where the US imports 14mbpd. As for the rest of the North slope - IF the suggestions are true (highly unlikely) - have not been developed and will take years to add to the production stream.
Don't trust anyone under 30.
lean hog futures just "broke the buck", too!
August Feeder Cattle; goin to be a good trade, I think.
Karl Denninger said the exact same thing, the day the last announcement was made... PEAK CONFIDENCE....
Anyone who has not been holding commodity stocks (or any stock) since QE2 last August is getting, "screwflated."
Everyone I know who is in the stock market is "happy." They are holding appreciating assets like GLD, USO, SLV, PALL...which have soared, some 100%.
The people holding depreciating assets---houses, cars, iPads, clothes-- are losing Big Time due to "screwflation."
""Kass describes the situation facing the American middle classes as "screwflation" and warns that the schism between the haves (large corporations), and have-nots (the middle classes) is widening and could jeopardize economic expansion if it is to continue.""
http://www.cnbc.com/id/41963272/
THE CONSUMER IS GOING TO TIGHTEN THE PURSE STRINGS. The consumer is the driver of the economy. get nervous if you aren't already!: http://www.hedgefundlive.com/blog/tuesday-market-expectations-we-are-all-pretty-nervous-if-not-we-are-ignorant
I think Gallup will be raided by FBI, CIA, NSA and Homeland Security soon for information terrorism..
It's Reagan's fault