Wednesday, September 02, 2015

COTW: A Vote of No Confidence

The chart shows Gallup's economic confidence indicator, and what it says is there is little confidence in the US economy with a level back to where it was last year. Most financial commentators now think the Fed will not increase interests rates at their meeting in September despite semaphore messages from Chairman Yellen that the central bank would increase rates.  The so-called recovery is simply too fragile at this point. As if to emphasize this fragility, the US stock market suffered its third-worst loss of the year, prompted by sell-offs of stocks in Asian and European markets after weak Chinese economic data was released. The Dow Jones fell almost 3% and the S&P fell 3% on Tuesday.  All this dispite a revision of Q2 GDP upward to 2.3% to 3.7%!  Who knows if that number is even real?  China's certainly isn't.