Doug Short had a blog post of September 29, 2015 (“Consumer Confidence Improved Moderately in September“) in which he presents the latest Conference Board Consumer Confidence and Thomson/Reuters University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index charts. They are presented below:
(click on charts to enlarge images)
–
–
There are a few aspects of the above charts that I find highly noteworthy. Of course, until the recent sudden upswing, the continued subdued absolute levels of these two surveys was disconcerting.
Also, I find the “behavior” of these readings to be quite disparate as compared to the other post-recession periods, as shown in the charts between the gray shaded areas (the gray areas denote recessions as defined by the NBER.)
While I don’t believe that confidence surveys should be overemphasized, I find these readings to be very problematical, especially in light of a variety of other highly disconcerting measures highlighted throughout this site.
_____
The Special Note summarizes my overall thoughts about our economic situation
SPX at 1882.37 as this post is written
No comments:
Post a Comment