(Still) Not Time to Be Betting on the Return of the Consumer

Even with today's stronger-than-expected reading for September, the Conference Board's Consumer Confidence Index has not kept pace with increases in many traditional indicators of economic well-being, and it remains signicantly below where it was prior to the financial crisis.

Among the possible reasons for the differential:

• broad-scale indicators are either overstating how good current conditions are do not adequately describe circumstances at the micro (e.g., household) level;
• a large share of the macro-level improvements have accrued to a small number of Americans (e.g., the wealthy); or,
• longer-term concerns, including worries over retirement and future job prospects [and levels of outstanding debts, which is leading some to turn to alternatives like same day payday loans or, in the United Kingdom, Company Rescue CVA], are overshadowing short-term improvements.

Regardless of which, if any, of these explanations is correct, the fact that consumer sentiment remains below where it should be, historically speaking, means that it's (still) not time to be betting on the return of the American consumer.

Comments

[Tom]

Everytime i look, another commodity will be or already is in short supply. Yesterday the concern was over global fish stocks. Today we have:
http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-pork-bacon-shortage-20120924,0,5901787.story
Bacon, pork shortage 'now unavoidable,' industry group says
Might want to get your fill of ham this year, because "a world shortage of pork and bacon next year is now unavoidable," according to an industry trade group.
Blame the drought conditions that blazed through the corn and soybean crop this year. Less feed led to herds declining across the European Union “at a significant rate,” according to the National Pig Assn. in Britain.

And the trend “is being mirrored around the world,” according to a release (hat tip to the Financial Times).

In the second half of next year, the number of slaughtered pigs could fall 10%, doubling the price of European pork, according to the release.

The trade group urged supermarkets to pay pig farmers a fair price for the meat to help cover the drought-related losses.

In U.S. warehouses, pork supply soared to a record last month, rising 31% to 580.8 million pounds at the end of August from a year earlier, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The surge came as farmers scaled down their herds as feeding the animals became increasingly expensive.

In July, global food prices leaped 10% from the month before, according to the World Bank. Maize and wheat jumped 25% while soybeans rose 17%.

(there's more)

[roger]

The customer is not coming back,period.
The ultimate economic competition is war, as the economic weather metamorphoses into a full blown category 5 hurricane, military adventures expend until they grow into a full blown ww3. Those childish brains who believe that international trade is about fair exchange of goods are living in a Walt Disney fantasy bubble. The way things are
moving the Fed will be the least of our problems.

[Consume, with what?]

Chris Hedges, How Do You Take Your Poison?

All the things that stand between us and utter destitution—Medicaid, food stamps, Pell grants, Head Start, Social Security, public education, federal grants-in-aid to America’s states and cities, the Women, Infants, and Children nutrition program (WIC), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and home-delivered meals for seniors—are about to be shredded by the corporate state.

Our corporate oligarchs are harvesting the nation, grabbing as much as they can, as fast as they can, in the inevitable descent...

Obama is not in charge. Romney would not be in charge. Politicians are the public face of corporate power. They are corporate employees. Their personal narratives, their promises, their rhetoric and their idiosyncrasies are meaningless. And that, perhaps, is why the cost of the two presidential campaigns is estimated to reach an obscene $2.5 billion. The corporate state does not produce a product that is different. It produces brands that are different. And brands cost a lot of money to sell.

You can dismiss those of us who will in protest vote for a third-party candidate and invest our time and energy in acts of civil disobedience. You can pride yourself on being practical. You can swallow the false argument of the lesser of two evils. But ask yourself, once this nightmare starts kicking in, who the real sucker is. "

Chris Hedges, How Do You Take Your Poison?

http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/2012/09/chris-hedges-reaping-of-america.html

[Alex Gold Goldman]

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Alex Goldman

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[roger]

If you want to know where good ship lollipop US dollar is headed,just ask: Caterpillar,FedEx, Intel, Procter & Gamble,Ford, Dow Chemical, Nike and the millions of unemployed stiffs. So much for the financial growth side.
If you want to know where the social togetherness is headed, check out, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Italy, China/Japan and the whole Middle East, if you want to know about the future of El Stupido Homo sapiens, check out the study conducted for 20 of the developing countrys.

[roger]

Climate Change Deaths Could Total 100 Million By 2030 If World Fails To Act

Reuters | Posted: 09/26/2012 5:50 am EDT Updated: 09/26/2012 10:29 am EDT