Top Trump official Kevin Hassett blames 'Michigan people' for souring consumer confidence survey

[progree]

3. Consumer Sentiment: Nov:71.8, Dec:74.0, Jan:71.7, Feb:64.7, Mar:57.9

So much for the "around an election" theory. It went up substantially from November to December and then slipped back to essentially its November level in January. After that, it fell sharply.

Someone in another thread asked why the consumer sentiment was still above 50%?

Ans: It's not a percentage. Rather it's some score that is indexed to 1966 = 100

http://www.sca.isr.umich.edu/

Chart: http://www.sca.isr.umich.edu/files/chicsr.pdf

Better chart from finance.yahoo.com:


Here's one going back 50 years:
http://www.sca.isr.umich.edu/files/chicsh.pdf

Another going back to 2003 (22 years) is in this article:
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/americans-sour-on-economy-as-inflation-expectations-hit-highest-level-since-1991-145631578.html

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12 month inflation expectation: from 3.3% in January to 4.3% in February to 4.9% in March,

5 year inflation expectation: from 3.5% in February to 3.9% in March (I'd have to dig for the January number, and earlier numbers)

A headline says that the inflation expectation is at a 34 year high (this happens around every election time I guess, because of sore losers I guess).
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/americans-sour-on-economy-as-inflation-expectations-hit-highest-level-since-1991-145631578.html

Pessimism over the inflation outlook soared again in March as one year-inflation expectations jumped to 4.9% from 4.3% the month prior. Just two months ago, consumers had only expected inflation of 3.3% over the next year.

Long-run inflation expectations, which track expectations over the next five to 10 years, climbed, too, hitting 3.9% in March, up from 3.4% in February. This marks the highest level of long-term inflation expectations since 1991. Also in the release, the expected change in unemployment hit its lowest level since the Great Financial Crisis.

There's a graph of the 5-10 year inflation expectation too at the finance.yahoo link above, as well as one of the Consumer Sentiment that's better than the one embedded above because it goes back to 2003.