In this story today, Gallup provides some interesting new polling data on the American mood which appears to have peaked late in the spring and is now faltering. For those keeping track, the two recent -12 readings are at about the average for 2013, still well into negative territory, meaning that more responses are negative than positive.
I guess we can all blame Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke for the recent decline as all the spring “tapering” talk squashed some of the momentum that the stock market had developed and raised serious questions about the surging housing market.
Unfortunately, lawmakers in Washington are about to start talking about the budget again and raising the debt ceiling, so, the outlook may not improve much from here. Recall that “fiscal cliff” issues early in the year played a key role in low confidence levels at the time.
Source: Iacono Research
