ABC's Consumer Comfort weekly poll (but based on a rolling 4 week average) is back to -47, a 5 week low and a level never seen from the poll's inception at the beginning of 2002 until May 2008.
Gallup's consumer polling shows a tad more personal optimism (feeling cheerful) but spending and hiring/not hiring statistics remain dismal.
So far, I suspect that the U. S. profit gains from domestic sources are mainly due to price increases and job cuts.
If oil prices do not go crazy on the upside, we are however likely in the past of the financial and economic cycle where all the money printing will go into sales increases due to volume as well as price increase. The ECRI has probably nailed it in predicting a yet lower baseline level of growth.
The country--and most of the world--simply needs to pay down debt.
Instead what is happening is that governmental deficits are being transmuted into private profit gains. It's a shell game that is leading to overall overvaluation of the private enterprises that are currently benefiting from this wealth transfer, and it is difficult to see why this existing trend will not continue tomorrow and then the next day. China bursting? Oil? War? Dirty nuke somewhere important?
And so this body of a stock market continues in motion while real people continue to experience depression-like circumstances.
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