Consumer Confidence - Better?

[girl gone mad]

http://market-ticker.denninger.net/archives/1799-Consumer-Confidence-Better.html">Consumer Confidence - Better?
The Market Ticker

I love the headline from Bloomberg:

Dec. 29 (Bloomberg) -- Confidence among U.S. consumers rose in December for a second month as pessimism over the outlook for jobs diminished.

It did?

The share of consumers who said jobs are plentiful fell to 2.9 percent from 3.1 percent, according to the Conference Board. The proportion of people who said jobs are hard to get decreased to 48.6 percent from 49.2 percent.

Ok, so jobs are less "plentiful" but are "less hard to get"? That's improvement.... how? (By the way, 3% of people believing that jobs are "plentiful" is pretty-much indistinguishable from zero, no?)

The gauge of expectations for the next six months climbed to 75.6, the highest since the recession began two years ago, from 70.3 the prior month.

WHAT expectations? Oh, general expectations. Yes, yes, we know that the incessant media pumping makes people "feel" better. But...

The proportion of people who expect their incomes to rise over the next six months decreased to 10.3 percent from 10.9 percent. The share expecting more jobs improved to 16.2 percent from 15.8 percent.

So we expect more jobs (by a bit) but less income (by a bit.)

Hmmm... can you remind me again what drives consumer spending? It was home equity withdrawal but you can't do that any more. It was then (late 2007 and into 2008) credit cards, but those are being closed down and pared back too.

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