… BUT ECONOMIC OUTLOOKS WORSENING
U.S. consumers are sending mixed signals about the health of the economy, according to the latest installment of Bloomberg’s Consumer Comfort Index (CCI).
“Evaluations of the national economy and the buying climate hit 2016 lows while perceptions of personal finances reached a more-than-five-month high,” compilers of the index (.pdf here) noted. “A strong labor market may be buoying personal finance evaluations, while lower-than-anticipated sales in housing and continuing difficulties due to oil prices and weak demand for exports are consistent with softening views of the national economy and buying climate alike.”
The index – which measures consumer comfort on a scale of zero to 100 – clocked in a 43.6 this week.
Here’s a look at the trend lines for each of its three core subindices …
Of interest? The CCI has remained within a tight one-point range for thirteen straight weeks. Such an extended holding pattern has been seen just “three other times in its 30-year history.”
Bloomberg’s CCI has been compiled on a weekly basis since December 1985 by Langer and Associates. Its record high of 69 was reached on January 16, 2000. Meanwhile its record low of 23 has been recorded on four separate occasions – most recently on June 21, 2009.
This website has been extremely bearish on the future of the U.S. economy … and we’re not alone. As we’ve said repeatedly, we don’t want to be a “perma-bear” website, we just want to go where the data takes us. Also we’ve been to “rainbows and unicorns” fantasyland – and we’re sure as hell not buying what they’re selling.
Bottom line? We believe America’s economic can be rescued if leaders in Washington, D.C. stop the perpetual incentivizing of dependency, status quo deficit spending, crony capitalism (a.k.a corporate welfare), rigged trade deals, invasive bureaucracy, reckless global interventionism, open borders and more secretive central bank “stimuli.”
In other words, Washington, D.C. needs to do a complete 180 …
8 comments
It probably won’t change much in the next six months, too much going on nationally and internationally. The terrorist threat, the Presidential election, uncertainty in markets(ie – oil), what the out-going President will do will hold everything in check.
All news is bad news apparently.
If anything ever turned out well, it would mean that libertarians were full of shit.
Oh for Christ sake. Chicken Little Will?
Is that anything like, why did the chicken cross the road?
For the cloths sale.
If Trump invaded Hell, I would at least make a favorable reference to the devil in the Senate