How does the consumer feel about the economy? In a word, lousy. The Conference Board, an industry group, reported that consumer confidence dropped to 49.3 in June, from a reading of 54.8 in May. Economists had expected it to be 55.
Here's another piece of bad news. Only 17.4% of consumers felt that more jobs would appear in the coming months, also down from 19.3% in May.
With the rise of unemployment to 9.4%, a larger pool of workers are chasing fewer and fewer jobs, which is also a negative. The author of the article linked above feels that consumers are saying "less bad" is not good enough. They want to see tangible results before they buy into the notion that the economy is improving.
Delinquency rates for less risky mortgages more than doubled from a year ago. Prime mortgages 60 days past due climbed 2.9% from 1.1% in 2008, according the the Office of the Comptroller. John Dugan,Comptroller of the Currency, said: "I'm very concerned about the rise in delinquent mortgages and foreclosure actions."
There are some bright spots, however. Prices in 8 of 20 areas reporting cited higher prices, with Phoenix, Miami, and Las Vegas still underwater.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
7-01-2009 @ 10:18AM
George Daniels said...
Just may be the consumer is waking up to the wholesale robbery of our free market system to king Obama and his cronies. Thus realizing this along with the government getting into and controlling health care, electricity, cars, insurance, banks, investment firms,almost all mortgages etc, etc will only add taxes and provide worsening services and oppertunities. Case in point social security (broke) medicare declining and very broke, and all the industries they had oversight over like Fannie and Freddie, AIG, the scam artists, banks and investment firms. And we really think giving more power to the government oversee is the solution.
7-01-2009 @ 10:40AM
Frank Gianino said...
as we sit back and wait. the people who voted for change.will get the answers to late. and find out the goverment is going to get all of the taxes raised.all the programs it wants. and the people will just have to take it.by then it will be to late agian. don't cry if you don't tell all the fokes in the gov.,to please read all the papers before they sign the bills.