U.S. Consumer Sentiment Gauge Declines to a Six-Month Low

[Purveyor]

By Lorraine Woellert - 2012-06-15T14:13:50Z

Confidence among U.S. consumers declined in June to the lowest level this year as the labor market showed few signs of improving.

The Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan index of consumer sentiment fell in June to 74.1 from 79.3 the prior month, which was the highest since October 2007. The gauge was projected to fall to 77.5, according to a median forecast of 66 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News.

A pace of job growth that’s slowed for four straight months and wage gains that are failing to keep pace with inflation are offsetting cheaper prices at the gas pump. At the same time, households may be feeling less wealthy as Europe’s debt crisis roils share prices, raising the risk that consumer spending will stagnate.

“I’m not so sure how much the average American is in tune with what is exactly occurring in Europe,” Russell Price, senior economist at Ameriprise Financial Inc. in Detroit, said before today’s report. “But it is at the front of their minds, because they’re seeing stock values decline and they’re seeing job growth decline and that’s worrisome.”

MORE...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-15/u-s-consumer-sentiment-gauge-declines-to-a-six-month-low.html

[Lionessa]

1. Just my personal opinion here:

I'm not at all surprised by this, particularly after Obama's comments last week. Yes, I get that it was supposedly a gaffe, but it mattered.

If, as it somewhat appears, Obama thinks the private sector is doing fine (which it isn't regardless of public sector or Wallstreet), and Obama is re-elected (as most people believe) then their is no confidence that things will change or get better.

IMO Obama needs to be talking about how things are NOT much better, how Repubs and DINOs (yes, I know Obama is one, but still) have blocked any jobs bills, and that he has plans for the future improvement and he needs more Dems (not DINOs) in office.

Of course that would mean he and the DNC would have to start supporting progs rather than the incumbent Blue Dogs, which they to date have refused to do.

Yep, makes perfect sense to me. No matter who wins we're f'd, it's just a matter of how deeply we have to take it in the .../

[Ghost of Huey Long]

2. They have extracted the wealth, there is nothing left

Did they mean, my friends, to say that all men are created equal and that that meant that any one man was born to inherit $10,000,000,000 and that another child was to be born to inherit nothing?

Did that mean, my friends, that someone would come into this world without having had an opportunity, of course, to have hit one lick of work, should be born with more than it and all of its children and children's children could ever dispose of, but that another one would have to be born into a life of starvation?

Is that, my friends, giving them a fair shake of the dice or anything like the inalienable right of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, or anything resembling the fact that all people are created equal; when we have today in America thousands and hundreds of thousands and millions of children on the verge of starvation in a land that is overflowing with too much to eat and too much to wear?

[gkhouston]

3. Is there some reason why you're spamming multiple threads with

unattributed quotes from a dead politician without adding any thoughts of your own?

[coalition_unwilling]

4. I understand where your question is coming from (I think), but I think

the words the poster quoted here are quite a propos to the current situation and this OP.

To wit, 16 million American chldren face one or more instances of food insecurity each month (aka "hunger&quot and the Repigs are debating a budget proposal to kick 280,000 more children off the supplemental nutirion assistance program. That is obscenity, no matter how the Supreme Court defines it.

[gkhouston]

5. True, but we scarcely need to look to the past to comprehend the bitter realities of the present.

The DUer in question has posted similar quotes six times in the last 30 minutes without adding any thoughts of his/her own, which is rather unusual.

[coalition_unwilling]

6. Understood. I get really annoyed with posters like that, esp ones

who post a link with no commentary of their own.

I'm like, thanks for the link (I guess) but what am I supposed to make of your posting of it?

Maybe the spirit of Huey P. Long really is haunting these parts, eh?