Consumer Confidence At 6 Year High, Do You Feel Confident?
Feeling good? Consumer confidence took a huge jump this month, hitting a 6 year high! Woohoo! Let's buy tacos and jetskis and footballs!
What's the cause for the jump? "An improvement in business conditions and the job market has lifted consumers' spirits in July," said Lynn Franco, director of The Conference Board Consumer Research Center, in a press release.
Do you feel more confident that you did last month? We feel the about the same.
Consumer Confidence At 6 Year High [Reuters]
(Photo:chicanerii)
PREVIOUSLY: Why So Sad? Consumer Confidence Is Down
Post a comment
Comments:
Consumer Confidence Index?
more like the
Wage Slavery Acquiescence Index.
Consumer confidence is measured based on our spending, right?
And everyone is trying to spend all their money before they die of poisoned Chinese products...
I'm confident that any publicly traded corporation has something is fine print to screw me when I make the mistake to consume their bullshit products.
Consume GIN!
I'm not sure I've got a lot of confidence in consumerist.
I'm confident that it's almost impossible to entirely avoid consuming cheap, poisoned garbage from China...Does that count?
I'm confident it's hard as hell to find anything to consume without corn syrup....
Meg, I now have an image of you perched atop a jetski, holding a taco in one hand and a football in the other, flying across the water like a banshee screaming, "Consuuuuuumerrrrrr confideeeeeence!". In fact, I think this should be The Consumerist's official icon representing consumer confidence. Or maybe I just want to see you in a bikini. :P
Tacos and jetskis and footballs, oh my!
@Chicago7: You're not drunk if you can lie down without holding on!!!
Just because I'm broke does not mean I'm confident...
Anyone know the margin of error in these studies?
Maybe if they polled people besides those they find milling around outside Apple's marketing department, they'd get better results...
Confident? Hell no! Prices at my grocery store just went up AGAIN last week, and given the news that oil just hit a record price today and milk prices are expected to rise, it doesn't look like they will be going down in the near future.
Most of my spending money is currently being used to stock on food. Might as well stock up before the prices inevitably rise again.
consumers should never be confident, but wary and invariably suspicious.
The only consumers who would be confident right now and spend more are the same ones who would still be slow as our country slides into depression. Our dollar is devalued so badly that I don't know that it can ever recover.
"Still be SO," not "still be slow." sorry
No job security - check.
No substantial safety net - check.
Gas prices high and unpredictiable - check.
Groceries wilder than betting in Vegas - check.
Other mandatory household costs high - check.
401k hemmoraging money due to stock market - check.
Consumer confidence, you gotta be kidding right?
Confident in everything but the housing market. Oh, and except the whole state of Michigan.
Honestly, the country is doing well(1). If we sit back and take a look at how we live from day to day (and not be jealous), we're doing okay. Well, except here in Michigan (people with jobs still do okay, but don't try to sell a house).
(1) Internally, not externally.
@bohemian: Ditto
With companies concerned with the almighty dollar, it's the consumer that pays the price.
Lifted spirits? Give me a break. She was probably talking to those individuals that carry huge credit card debt and don't how to manage their money.
Meg: This could have been a good poll.
Yea, Michigan is doing pretty badly. It's like the movers and shakers of job creation think it's 1950. Michigan will never be the world leader in manufacturing again when you have to pay people $27 an hour to screw in lug nuts.
Like when Electrolux left the state a year or so ago? Some people on the production line with nothing but a high school education were making $30 an hour!
At the same time, I'm a graphic designer with two college degrees, and it's hard to break the 20 mark.
Is it really confidence or is it the collected broken spirit of millions of American consumers giving in to big business? Are we confident or just breaking down and giving in and buying our tickets on the Chinese Poison Train one by one?
G-Dog:
Just because you have a college degree, doesn't mean you're entitled to anything.
-0-
I have confidence in this economy to explode in a spectacular consumer credit crisis in the near future.
However, as far as consumer goods goes, my wife and I have paid off a huge amount of our debt, so we feel better about things overall.
Yeah, no. I don't know who they're talking to. I don't know anyone who doesn't think we're headed for disaster. I'll feel lucky if we can hold our own for the next few years.
So, your saying that $30 is fair compensation for somebody with only a high school education for a job that requires no skills, when my wife is a dental hygienist, a state regulated health profession, and doesn't make that much.
Link is dead. Does that mean consumer confidence is dead as well? I for one have NO confidence in the economy
the only thing I have confidence in is that I'll be able to lowball a house seller, and that they'll probably take my offer.
@G-Dog: No, the $30/hr lug-nutter likely was the result of a coercive market distortion (e.g., a union). Whereas your wife is probably at (or much closer) to her fair compensation (what a willing employer will pay and a willing employee will accept). Her work may be hard, it may be demanding, it may be gross, it may require training and licensure -- but as long as there is a queue of others behind her willing and able to do the work too it's hard to make the case she's underpaid.
Sure, why not? I'm confident. Tanned, rested and confident! Drunk, tanned, rested and confident.