Consumer Confidence Up in June (21') Indicating Optimism and Purchasing Power

Consumer confidence improves again in June following a positive trend over the last four months. The index works off a couple of different assessments. The Present Situation Index rose from 148.7 to 157.7 and is a measurement of consumers' assessment of current business and labor market conditions. The Expectations Index which is a shorter term assessment of labor, income, and business rose to 107.0, up from 100.9 the prior month. 

You can read the publishing from The Conference Board and their findings on new business applications. See Consumer Confidence June. The think tank has some excellent charts and graphs for you to review. ( Side note: They appear copywrite so I didn't want to share without permission. The purpose is to sum up complex information very quickly for readers. That is especially important for executives that are bombarded by information everyday.). 

Consumer confidence is about how people feel and is a little more grass roots in its evaluation than some of the other index. Since all economic behavior is human behavior at its root, it makes sense to understand how and what people are thinking in terms of near and mid term future. The animal spirts relate to how we subjectively feel and our ability to satiate those feelings with resources.

Consumer optimism leads to increased spending. When spending is on U.S. products (as defined as having an HQ and significant production operations in the U.S.) we improve those markets. Older economic theories became stressed because they were often based on an unwritten logic that money would stay in a country in a sticky/static way but globalization has changed those assumptions (It is possible that why we lost some of our power because relied on antiquated models that were outstripped in the past few decades by unknown digital innovation.)The digital economy changed these assumptions even further leading to additional gaps between old models and actual activities (I don't know. Maybe? 🤷).

(Hopefully we buy more American and attract more companies to relocate their HQ to the U.S.. A buy American movement matched with a calibrated tax structure might encourage more businesses to move to the U.S. and utilize the American consumer spending power to replenish depleted tax coffers from sales tax, employment tax, and corporate taxes. ...thinking out loud. 🤔)