Carter Country, redux!
Confidence among U.S. consumers plunged in August to the lowest level since May 1980, adding to concern that weak employment gains and volatility in the stock market will prompt households to retrench.
The Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan preliminary index of consumer sentiment slumped to 54.9 from 63.7 the prior month. The gauge was projected to decline to 62, according to the median forecast in a Bloomberg News survey.
The biggest one-week slump in stocks since 2008 and the threat of default on the nation’s debt may have exacerbated consumers’ concerns as unemployment hovers above 9 percent and companies are hesitant to hire. Rising pessimism poses a risk household spending will cool further, hindering a recovery that Federal Reserve policy makers said this week was already advancing “considerably slower” than projected.
“The mood is very depressed,” said Chris Christopher, an economist at IHS Global Insight Inc. in Lexington, Massachusetts. “Consumers are very fatigued and very uncertain. In the short term, people are going to pull back on spending.”
Estimates of 69 economists for the confidence measure ranged from 59 to 66.5, according to the Bloomberg survey. The index averaged 89 in the five years leading up to the recession that began in December 2007.
Yeah, fine, okay.
But what I want to know is, will Michelle Bachmann, drawing on her creepy Christian faith, submit to her husband if he, say, gets shitfaced on berry wine coolers and decides that Jesus wants us to preemptively nuke Uzbekistan, “the gayest of all the countries in the gay gay world”?
These are the questions that keep all us bitterclingers up nights. Which is why I’m so glad they get asked. In our name. To cater to us.
As Insty is wont to say, Carter II is a best-case scenario.
The progressives sure managed to sell their “default” meme, didn’t they? What a load of crap, and now everyone is shoveling the same shit.
Christie is not a conservative.
Christie is an old-school Democrat, not the progressive kind.
if we all pray with Uzbekistan now we might can save having to nuke them later
ok everybody let’s all hold hands
Catholicism and therein, fading yet remnant Thomas Aquinas, most like.
Christie and Cuomo have a lot in common I think
more than me and christie have anyway
plus he’s kind of a pompous asshole
and he needs to lose weight that just looks uncomfortable
That really cracked me up.
Consumer sentiment has dropped to a three-decade low? Oh dear, I’m sure that’s bad news for Hallmark. I mean! What will they do if people don’t care enough to send the very best? What if we’re so unsentimental that we start emailing people on their special occasions? That would be bad news for the Postal Service too! No more greeting cards to slit open searching for cash from Grannie. It could be TEOTWAWKI!!eleventy!!! So stop being such party poopers! Suck it up and get sentimental right now, you hear! The greeting card industry depends on it.
This just hits too close to home! It’s our 20th anniversary today and our consumer sentiment has fallen so low that we’re going to go out for a beer later. The rest of you must pick up the slack!
Oh dear, I’m sure that’s bad news for Hallmark.
ABC Family ain’t real thrilled, either.
Brace yourselves for shriveled-up Doris Kearns Goodwin to be seen trotting around the country touting how Obama should go all FDR in his war presidency, prepared to fuse business and government to “get ‘er done”.
You remember those years, yes?
Rationed gasoline and oil products, rationed steel, rationed rubber, rationed foodstuffs and leather goods? Yeah, thanks Doris.
I can absolutely see Obama and his sooper-jeenyuses coming up with a scheme to boost consumption by rationing consumables.
Thing is, what, as per the analog, is he going to be doing with the rest of the commodities but placing them in the industries and products of his choosing? We’ll have a wind-turbine in every pot and a battery powered tv in every garage.
President: “Ok, seriously – who thought this was a good design?”
— Monsters vs. Aliens
[…] “Consumer Sentiment Drops to Three-Decade Low” But what I want to know is, will Michelle Bachmann, drawing on her creepy Christian faith, submit to her husband if he, say, gets shitfaced on berry wine coolers and decides that Jesus wants us to preemptively nuke Uzbekistan, “the gayest of all the countries in the gay gay world”? […]