NEW YORK (AP) - Consumer confidence hit a six-year high in July, a widely watched gauge of sentiment showed on Tuesday, as Americans shrugged off falling home prices to focus on a healthy jobs market, instead.
The New York-based Conference Board said that its Consumer Confidence Index, rebounded to 112.6, its highest level since August 2001 when it recorded a 114.0 reading
%26quot;An improvement in business conditions and the job market has lifted consumers%26#039; spirits in July,%26quot; said Lynn Franco, director of The Conference Board Consumer Research Center.
A healthy outlook for jobs has been helping consumers. The Labor Department is expected to show an increase in 135,000 jobs in July when it reports monthly figures on Friday. The unemployment rate is projected to be steady at 4.5 percent
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=...
Why is the economy booming?cash loan
It%26#039;s that darn Bush. Ever since he lowered taxes, everything started going great. We should get him out of office as soon as possible.
Why is the economy booming? loan
More like exploding.
Ever hear of what you can do with a poll or stats?|||The Finest President in United States History - Mr. George W. Bush.
He has lowered taxes for the Working families, so they can afford the things they needs, ensuring a good flow!
Thank you Mr. President, You da Man!!|||military industrial complex...economy booms whenever theres a war.
Watch the documentary %26quot;Why We Fight%26quot; for more info|||Because it%26#039;s not? In case you haven%26#039;t heard, the Dow took a down turn--the worst in five years! Not that the Dow has anything to do with most Americans anyway. And we have runaway inflation, climbing interest rates, inflated housing prices--all compounded by high gas prices which raises the cost of all consumer goods. Sorry, the enonomy still stinks.|||The economy is not booming. It has been on a downward spiral for about 25 years. I have lost enough jobs and it took me over a year to find a grunt job.|||I see credit taken and blame placed by politicians for the state of our economy. But I%26#039;ve never been able to see, except in the case of Reagan (positive effect), how a certain president or congressional mix actually affected the economy.
As the election nears, of course the dems are going to start expounding on how the Bush criminals and thieves have tanked the economy and put us in a deep hole. And the repubs are going to point out, correctly, that the economy is robust.
Its already started. I saw an interview on CNBC tonight of two men, each of whom had a different take on the economy...one who believes its gangbusters and one who doesn%26#039;t believe the numbers and who would rather look foolish and blame Bush.
I conclude that our economy is booming IN SPITE OF our meddlesome government.
NOTE to dumdum: The stock market is undergoing a due correction. No worries there. Runaway inflation? Have you been asleep for the last 20 years? Its LOW. Climbing interest rates...maybe for housing (if you have good credit, you can still get a home loan for around 6.25 percent or less)but in general, interest rates are very low right now. The fed funds rate crept up to keep inflation in check and to keep the ecomony from overheating. Its still very low in historical terms. Housing in some areas of the country has been inflated for years and some of those markets are correcting now, and its overdue. Most areas of the country have healthy housing markets. While your particular situation may not be ideal, its not the economy%26#039;s fault. Its in great shape.|||Oh really? Just look at the stock market.
Dow down 281.42 (2.09%)
Nasdaq down 64.73 (2.51%)
S%26amp;P 500 down 39.14 (2.66%)
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/070803/wall_stre...
This gloom and doom you speak of is a little thing I like to call reality|||For the man who made it happened. Bush
http://www.blogsforbush.com/mt/archives/...|||consumer confidence....in what? how was this arrived at? just cal some smack out of the phone book and ask if he likes his i-pod? this has nothing to do with sound economic policy, on any given day you can get different reading by calling a different demographic. But I guess that a gifted economist such as your self would understand how absurd applying consumer confidence to economic analysis, unless you are Walmart employee. Stock market? housing market , trade deficit, national debt, record high personal debt. Yep you must employee of the month.
Why are the inflation numbers understated? Why would government officials cook the books? The answer is simple: money. Most government-employed people are on cost-of-living adjusted pay packages. Social security programs, retirement programs and pension contributions are all inflation-adjusted.
Interest payments on national debt (which is very high in both the U.S. and the U.K.) would go up dramatically if inflation was reported closer to its real level. In other words, there are billions to be saved if you can keep the official inflation figures down. Manipulating the numbers is surprisingly simple.|||because liberals are not running things|||Ya, right...
House prices are still far beyond ANY historically known relationship to rents or salaries. Rents are less than half of mortgage payments. Salaries cannot cover mortgages except in the very short term, by using adjustable interest-only loans. Anyone who buys now will suffer losses immediately, and for the next several years at least.
The best summary explanation, from Business Week: %26quot;Today%26#039;s housing prices are predicated on an impossible combination: the strong growth in income and asset values of a strong economy, plus the ultra-low interest rates of a weak economy. Either the economy%26#039;s long-term prospects will get worse or rates will rise. In either scenario, housing will weaken.%26quot;
Your %26quot;job increase%26quot; amounts to nothing more than a bunch of %26quot;McJobs%26quot; and you know it.|||All the Left wants is defeat in Iraq and a severe recession. The Administration appears to be trying to help them. Lincoln changed commander of the Army of the Potomac as necessary. The Administration and the GOP losers in the Congress, like that fool Senator Grassley, failed to get the tax cuts extended. Failure to try different approaches and failure to extend the cuts are the recipe for the complete destruction of the GOP, unless the nomination is secured by someone who is utterly ruthless.
In my view, the GOP are utterly moronic. Don%26#039;t they realize that the last time we had a fool like this in the White House, it was Herbert Hoover, and he failed to do what he was told by Andrew Mellon - the most talented GOP Secretary of the Treasury in the Twentieth Century - namely, absolutely nothing?
FDR then instituted a witch-hunt against Mellon whose aggressive tax cuts policy was the basis of the Coolidge prosperity and FDR even scared J. Paul Getty into giving to FDR - essentially protection money. Mellon died before he was completely absolved, having already been acquitted by a jury, he was also absolved by the administrative investigation.
FDR, in my view, was a dark and malevolent person. This Administration like Hoover%26#039;s is full of fools playing out of their league. This is not a case of Mr. Longfellow Deeds going to town, it is a case where in a battle with the likes of Pelosi, Murtha, Hoyer and Schumer, the Administration goes unarmed. There may be a lot that can be said against Trent Lott and the late Strom Thurmond, but at least, they knew the enemy.|||I agree.
4.5 % unemployment.
True inflation is at all time lows.
Whoever it was that said interest rates were creeping up? Really? Maybe by a point in the last 365 days. We%26#039;re just NOW beginning to approach housing interest rate numbers of the Clinton years, but I do know that my brother purchased his house a year and a half ago at 4.9% for thirty years! So if libs want the Clinton economy back, we will get back to it if a Dem wins the White House, with housing rates back at 7% or higher.
OH YEAH! And NOW the libs want to quote the markets numbers? When they are flying high consistently, they are the first ones to say that the markets don%26#039;t have anything to do with the economy, but yet now they do?
What morons!
I have several stocks in my portfolio. One thing libs don%26#039;t get, are corrections in the market. However, These fast climbs and drops are when people make their money. When they climb quickly, you sell at the first sign of a dip making a good profit. When they look to be climbing again after a dip, you buy cheap. It doesn%26#039;t take rocket science.
For those that can%26#039;t find anything better than a grunt job in a year? You are either a union person with no other form of training or education, or you just need to consider moving to a different job market area.
For those that want to whine about the economy.
How many of you have more than 2 TV%26#039;s in your house?
How many have at least 1 computer? Many these days have multiple computers in one household.
Most households have more than 2 cars today.
Cell phones? Fuggedaboudit.
We are a society of a bunch of spoiled rotten brats.
Just because you may not be able to afford the latest and greatest %26quot;iphone%26quot;, doesn%26#039;t mean the economy is in the crapper.
People are buying bigger, better and faster things everyday these days. They also seem to forget how much better off we are than compared to ten years ago.
Libs just won%26#039;t admit it because it isn%26#039;t their man in the White House.
If Kerry were in the White House today. According to Libs, the economy would be booming right now at the current numbers. Of course that wouldn%26#039;t have happened because he would have raised taxes to Clintonian levels prohibiting financial growth.|||Hmm... It doesn%26#039;t seem rosy, though.
Health insurance is a problem for many people. In my state, home loan defaults are pretty high. There are lots of jobs, but they are low paying jobs, mostly retail. Rising fuel costs and rising milk costs might not be significantly affecting people%26#039;s budgets, but it creates an illusion of inflation.
I know I%26#039;m not statistically significant, but it doesn%26#039;t seem like things are as good as this article says.
One possibility is that these stats are not the only things that make the economy healthy.
And, of course, Consumer confidence and the economy are only a part of what makes a country happy.
On the other hand, I have my new house, and things are going fine for me. Bush is imploding, and the next president will likely be a Democrat, so whose to say?
++++++Oops!++++++
I just came back to Y!Answers and realized that I didn%26#039;t actually answer your question: Why is the economy booming?
And the answer is simple. Bush and the Republican Congress (up until 2006) pushed programs that should have increased these numbers, and they were successful.|||LOLOL
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070804/ap_o...
Not...|||All the gloom and doom is because the economy is not booming like it was in the Clinton years. Those were good times.
