Thread: Consumer Confidence Drops in January

Consumer Confidence Drops in January

MoneyNews
Tuesday, Jan. 29, 2008

NEW YORK -- U.S. consumer confidence fell in January, with shoppers turning more negative on current business conditions and their assessment of the job market, a new survey showed Tuesday.
The Conference Board said its index of consumer sentiment fell to 87.9 from an upwardly revised 90.6 in December.

The median forecast of economists polled by Reuters was for a reading of 87.5.

Lynn Franco, director of the Board's consumer research center, said "consumers are quite downbeat about the short-term future and a greater proportion expect business conditions and employment to deteriorate further in the months ahead."

"The percentage of consumers anticipating an improvement in their earnings has declined and could potentially impact spending decisions," Franco said.

The present situation Index rose to 115.3 in January from an upwardly revised 112.9 in December, while the expectations index fell to 69.6 from an upwardly revised 75.8.

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"The percentage of consumers anticipating an improvement in their earnings has declined and could potentially impact spending decisions," Franco said.

No, ya think?

This is something that the greedy corporate idiots don't seem to figure out. If you give better raises each year to the employees who deserve it, that employee in turn has more disposable income and will most likely spend more keeping money back in the economy.
Now, onto the macro economic level. If execs didn't have to satisfy their greed and need 12 million dollar salaries, they could easily re-distribute this money among the employees to further stimulate the economy.
So to sum this up, if you have more lower to middle class families who now have a little more disposable income, there will be a larger number of people spending money helping the economy, instead of a few dozen overly rich boobs who couldn't begin to spend half their money they have.

If they continue to give crappy raises to their employees, while the cost of living continues to skyrocket, very soon hardly anyone will have any disposable income to spend and their profits will disappear.