Consumer Comfort Index At 14-Year Low
Well, here's some bad news. Reuters says that the ABC News/Washington Post Consumer Comfort Index dropped to -33 in the week ended Feb. 3, which is its lowest reading since November 1993.
In a separate ABC News/Washington Post poll released earlier this week, 59 percent of Americans said they think the economy is already in a recession.Do you think the economy is already in a recession?Confidence measures are generally viewed as a barometer of consumer spending, which accounts for two-thirds of the U.S. economy. However, economists note that consumers do not always act in accordance with their statements to surveys.
The ABC/Washington Post consumer confidence survey was based on a sample of about 1,000 interviews conducted in the four weeks ending Feb. 3 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
ABC/Wash Post Consumer Comfort Index hits 14-year low [Reuters]
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59 percent of Americans think we are are in a recession because it's been on the news everyday. The facts seem to be irrelevant.
Ahh the recession of 1993! I mean, what?!
Well no, economists seem to be in agreement that the economy is in an recession, even if the government won't admit to it.
@hypnotik_jello: Now the real question is are we really going into a "recession" as in a negative GDP growth or are we simply reducing the growth, but still remaining positive.
Lets compare it to a car. If you've been a passenger in a car going 70 mph for ten hours, you're used to it. Its what you've come to expect. Now, you start to slow down. As the passenger, you don't know whether you're slowing to a stop (lets just call that a recession) or whether you're simply slowing because the roads are getting worse, slowing to 50 mph.
Either way, that first 20 mph drop will look the same.
@madanthony: Our income is pretty recession proof too. If I still worked in a highly volatile sector I would be losing sleep over this.
I pretty much lost everything post 9-11 and swore that wouldn't happen twice.
But still the cost of everything has gone up and stayed up. It is starting to eat at people. Unless your getting some big raises it is probably eating into your ability to pay your bills or at least eating into your fun money.
Well let me say this about the job market. I activated my resume online about 2 weeks ago and have so far received zero calls about jobs. This is usually the busiest time of the year, and I have a friend in the same line of business who is also looking for work.
So where are the jobs? Oh I'm a technical writer, so not something that you can outsource to India.
I don't remember where I heard this, but if the guy who said: "Since when did a slow down in growth became a recession?" is true, then I don't think there's a recession... yet.
Considering this seems to be all about greed and ignorance running unchecked in big enterprise, I can't see the economy getting any better unless people who run those businesses suddenly wake up one day and stop being sleazy and stupid. Then again, they're rich and I'm not, so they're probably not that stupid.
I wish I could afford to live on my private yacht and not worry about the thousands of families I sold bad loans to. That's what's really killing us all, not the price of oil or lead in toys. I'll submit my fingerprints and iris patterns to the FBI for my protection and shut up, now.
@GothamGal: Yeah, well, I'm not only doing that but I'm also sending out inquiries to places since I actively want to relocate (to a specific area, but still) and I'm not getting much of a response.
Um.... I bet you 59% of Americans can't even correctly define "recession," let alone the same % of news desks.
LoL with all this coverage how could anyone not think we are in recession.
@Tux the Penguin: Yes, but the population also grows at a certain rate, so "they" like to keep the GDP growth at the same rate. Whereas, in some places in Europe, where population growth is actually negative, a reduction of growth would still be good news.
There is no recession. It is all a bunch of bullshit. A recession is defined as six solid months of negative growth. We need to actually, you know, recede. We haven't even had one month of negative growth. Yes, the economy is slowing down. It happens. We can't continue to increase our growth rate year after year after year.
So, we are still growing, it's simply the rate of that growth that has slowed. This is not a recession and it never has been. However, if the assholes running the news networks continue screaming RECESSION!!! at the top of their lungs, they might just convince enough people to change certain behaviors, thus sparking an actual recession. This is incredibly irresponsible and I wish they'd shut the fuck up and stop fear mongering. (On the other hand, if it convinces people to stop buying crap they don't need with money they don't have, and focus on paying off their debt and saving money instead, perhaps it's not so bad.)
How is this bad news? At least there is some recognition that things are not as they should be. This could be the first step in getting Americans to rein in their out-of-control spending, pay their bills and recklessly spending money they do not have. Anybody who is not uncomfortable with the state of things right now is not paying attention. As a nation, and as a government,we are in debt up to our ears.
We might not fit the dictionary definition of "recession", but the economy is definitely not healthy right now.
In the last two weeks alone, my usual trip to the grocery store went up by $10, my electric company announced rate increases, and the interest rate on my savings account was cut by 0.5%. Now, I live frugally, have emergency savings, and I don't have any debt, but this still felt like a kick to the nuts. Inflation has already overtaken my annual cost-of-living salary increase, and the purchasing power of my savings is quickly eroding. If this trend continues, then I don't even want to imagine what my bills will look like at the end of the year. I'll be saving Bush's welfare check for when things really start to get tough.
I feel a little like the tail is wagging the dog on this. For the last few months, the media has been talking about how bad things are, politicians on both sides have been campaigning about how screwed we are (but if we vote for them, they will make it better).
I think there are sectors of the economy that are bad, like housing. And high gas prices suck. But I think that the constant talk of how bad things are/will be is making things worse.
Then again, I work in higher ed, so I'm pretty safe from most of the big shifts in the economy.