The Collapse of Consumer Confidence

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Originally published on March 28, 2022 The Collapse of Consumer Confidence [Jeffery Tucker] JEFFREY TUCKER Dear Reader, It’s bad news. The charts at the Federal Reserve have not yet been updated, so you will just have to take my word for it. The University of Michigan has managed an index of consumer confidence since 1977. It surveys people on their economic outlook. It considers inflation, productivity, income, employment, finance and other factors and puts them all into a single number so that you can compare year over year. The results have closely tracked recessions and recoveries, even foretelling them with a great deal of accuracy. This is why they matter so much. The new numbers came out over the weekend. The picture is not pretty. Consumer confidence, as measured by this index, is now at a 40-year low. It matches 1980. It will soon fall to the lowest point since the measure began. In other words, it’s an epic crash, and lower now than even during the worst of the lockdowns. What I am seeing here: there was a brief rise in optimism following the election of Biden when it appeared that the environment could get better. Stimulus checks were flooding bank accounts and inflation hadn’t yet become entirely weird. By August of last year, all bets were off. The period of hope crashed. We’ve been sinking ever since, through the winter, and now continuing into spring. What happened? The collateral damage of 2020’s economic destruction began to unfold all around us, manifesting itself in inflation above all else. The labor outlook remained strong throughout, and right now this is the only feature that is saving the measure from tanking even further. Millions who left the workplace in 2020 never came back to work. Then, hundreds of thousands were fired due to vaccine mandates. Therefore, the seemingly good outlook for jobs is itself entirely artificial, a result not of a hot market but of a forced shortage. How Could They Have Done This? No one thinks politicians are particularly brilliant people but one might assume that they would have some minimal capacity for basic logic. So, it should strike us as utterly bizarre that the Biden administration didn’t see this coming. They cracked down on fossil fuel, made it clear that they were going for some pipedream in which wind and water made all our energy, and then kept urging the Fed to print more. A year and three months into the fiasco of this administration and the results are all around us, and as inevitable as night following day. It’s a mess, not only economically but also politically. Biden’s popularity is at a new low. He is ever more despised and the entire public is blaming his administration for the inflation. Not even the war has made a difference. The bump only lasted a few days and then it disappeared. So far as I can remember, this is the first time that a major war has not boosted presidential popularity. If this entire Russia/Ukraine bit was little more than an attempt to distract the public from the wreckage around us, it did not work. It’s even worse for Biden. A new poll documents it: “Only 28% of respondents said they have either a ‘great deal’ or ‘quite a bit’ of confidence in Biden’s handling of the Russia-Ukraine crisis, and a whopping 44% said they have ‘very little’ confidence in the president.” In other words, war has made things worse, not better. Federal Agents Coming For Your Cash? [Click here to learn more]( Every move you make… Every dollar you spend… And every asset you own… Is set to be DECIMATED – in as little as one year. It’s all because of Executive Order 14067… Which Biden quietly signed behind closed doors on Wednesday, March 9, 2022. No one in the mainstream media covered it… But this disturbing move sets the stage for TOTAL government control of YOUR money. [Click here to learn how to protect yourself from Biden’s plan for the dollar](. The Coming Chaos I’ve seen my first gas lines of the season. Cars were snaking around the block in lines waiting to fill the tank. This is because the station was selling regular gas for $4.04 per gallon. I assumed that this was far lower than elsewhere. Why else would so many people wait in line? Checking out a station only one block away, I found $4.11 per gallon with no lines. Which is to say that people were waiting in lines up to 30 minutes or longer only to save a few bucks on a full tank. That strikes me as irrational, but these days irrational has become the norm. Incidentally, the only way to generate long lines at gas stations will be through price controls. Otherwise, supply and demand adjusts with the price to equilibrate and keep lines at a minimum. In the 1970s, energy price controls were what generated the lines. Rationing by license plate contributed too. It was a forced shortage. I have a hard time imagining that the Biden administration would resort to price controls. And yet, I’ve continually underestimated the stupidity of the White House for the better part of a year. They seemed to be determined to doom not only the entire American economy and world empire but also their own political prospects. Every pollster confirms that things are looking catastrophically bad for November. The D.C. Monster Over the weekend, the US president made a major speech in which he casually suggested that he favors regime change in Russia — “for God's sake, this man cannot remain in power” — thereby confirming all the reasons why Putin was panicked by political trends in Ukraine. He suspected a genuine threat. Biden confirmed that in his speech. The White House worked to walk it back in every way possible but the damage was already done. Maybe it was an accident or maybe deliberate but, either way, it makes a diplomatic solution far less likely. Again, this stuff is truly beyond belief. Gone are the days of sensibile diplomacy and serious thinking from government. Years ago, as a young man, I lived in DC, working with a journalist at the Senate press gallery. I never liked the place, especially not its climber culture that always puts a premium on access to power. When I have to go back, I try to get in and get out without paying much attention. The other day was different. I needed to be there for an event and returned to my old stomping grounds on Capitol Hill. I took note for the first time: brick buildings had new marble fronts, new floors added, and expansions in every direction. In general, there was nothing remaining of the “town” feeling that was once there. The place now has the look and feel of an empirical city right out of Hunger Games. The place is awash in stolen money. It offends every moral sensibility. The city of Washington, D.C., is bringing down the rest of the country and even the world, and yet there seems to be a strange lack of awareness about it all. This is how empires end. Daily I receive emails from panicked people with shattered lives, reaching out for advice on what to do. Sadly, there is no safe space for anyone these days. My best advice relates to the information to which we have access. The old trusted sources are no longer trustworthy. Cling to the truth tellers, while they still have the tools to speak. Regards, [Jeffrey Tucker] Jeffrey Tucker [CHART] Could Inflation Hit 20%+ In 2023? [Click here to learn more]( Take a close look at this scary chart pictured here… What you see is the money supply in America… And as you can see, the number of dollars in circulation has exploded in the last few years. In fact, more than 80% of all dollars to ever exist have been printed since just 2020 alone! Which is why some say inflation could soon explode even higher than it is now, to 20% or more. And if you’re at or near retirement age you must take action now to protect yourself… otherwise you risk losing everything. [Simply click here now to see how to survive America’s deadly inflation crisis](. [Paradigm]( ☰ ⊗ [ARCHIVE]( [ABOUT]( [Contact Us]( © 2022 Paradigm Press, LLC. 808 Saint Paul Street, Baltimore MD 21202. By submitting your email address, you consent to Paradigm Press, LLC. delivering daily email issues and advertisements. To end your Gilder's Daily Prophecy e-mail subscription and associated external offers sent from Gilder's Daily Prophecy, feel free to [click here.]( Please note: the mailbox associated with this email address is not monitored, so do not reply to this message. We welcome comments or suggestions at feedback@gildersdailyprophecy.com. This address is for feedback only. 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