Goldman Sachs identified a potential culprit for sour consumer sentiment readings: A decline in happiness.
The consumer sentiment index tracked by the University of Michigan hit record lows this year. The index fell 13% year over year in September, due to a drop of almost 8% from August alone.
Economists have widely questioned why sentiment has remained depressed since the Covid pandemic, even as the economy hummed along on paper. Goldman economist Joseph Briggs told clients this week that the downward pressure may stem from broader pessimism in society.
“Low reported economic sentiment likely reflects a more fundamental, downbeat assessment of the state of the world rather than the economy,” Briggs wrote to clients.
Its not the escalating COLA? It definitely isn’t the coming disel crunch. It’s just a sour mood?
You know what helps me when I am in a bad mood? Comfort food. Maybe this Goldman guy should advise that the government let the people eat cake. That sort of advice has always had a good outcome.
Not just at record prices but also the LA to Dallas route is slowing down which is for those not in the know real fucken bad.
I guess I’m not in the know…what does this mean?
I was not either and looked it up.
They’re referring to that corridor being one of the largest in terms of supply chain for the rest of the county.
A slow down in that supply chain is an indicator of weak retail demand.
I can’t quantify anything for you, but it sounds like another indicator that the stock market doesn’t actually represent how well ‘the economy’ is doing.
As the other guy noted it’s basically one of the big routes for the movement of goods within the US also one of the longer ones. If it slows down it’s usually a right fucken bad sign and usually is a pretty solid real world economic indicator of how the economy is doing even if it’s a tad imprecise. I live right by where the CA 60 merged with the 10 which is a pretty major merger section and it has been getting increasingly sparce.
Basically to put it in other terms it’d be like living on the Adriatic during the late medieval era and watching Venetian ships coming to port less and less. You may not know what’s causing it exactly but you know it’s not good regardless.