Consumer sentiment is in the dumps despite a solid economy. Goldman Sachs blames 'lower happiness'
www.cnbc.com
Goldman economist Joseph Briggs said broader pessimism in society may be contributing to struggling consumer sentiment even as the economy chugs along.

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.

        • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
          13·
          1 day ago

          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.

        • RunningTowardTheVoid@lemmy.worldEnglish
          12·
          1 day ago

          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.

          • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.worldEnglish
            3·
            11 hours ago

            I’ve been taking a wait-and-see attitude for a few years, honestly. To me, the stock market looks a lot like tulip-bulb mania. Stocks like Tesla and SpaceX seems absolutely insane to me. It’s like everyone is betting on everyone else vibing out on Elon’s bullshit, and thinking either they will continue to believe it, or continue to pretend to believe it, pumping up the stock to absurd levels of P/E ratios.

            Same goes for virtually everything AI, and so many things are tied to AI now. When that rug pull happens, it’s going to fucking hurt.

            The sad part is that the very minute the idle rich pull out of speculation on market bubbles, that’s when the layoffs roll through just about every company, even companies that are not really involved.

            For all their talk about “leadership”, just about everyone running companies, even the small ones, just mimic one another. “If companies like Oracle lay off people, well, gosh, why aren’t we doing the same?” Someone may counter with “well, sir, we are in no way tied to Oracle or their business model or anything and our financials are just fine”, but MBA-brain is usually hard to be reached by actual facts.

    • TipRing@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      24 hours ago

      You know what? Pizza party for the whole country. And you can wear jeans on Friday. You’re welcome.