POLL: Confidence Slides to 14-Year Low
Poll shows decline similar to start of 1990-91 and 2001 recessions.
Feb. 5, 2008 — -- Consumer confidence dropped sharply to a 14-year low this week, extending a month-long decline similar to those seen at the start of the 1990-91 and 2001 recessions.
The ABC News Consumer Comfort Index stands at -33 on its scale of +100 to -100, down 6 points in the past week and 13 points in the past month. That's an unsettling sign: The index fell by 13 points in four weeks just in advance of the 1990-91 recession and by 14 points in four weeks leading up to the 2001 recession.
A decline of this week's magnitude, moreover, is rare: The CCI has lost 6 or more points in a single week on just 11 occasions in 22 years of weekly surveys. This week's fall occurred mainly in the West, where confidence had been higher than in other regions.
In a separate ABC News/Washington Post poll this week, 59 percent said they think the economy's already in a recession and two-thirds expressed doubt that a government stimulus package would do much to soften the blow. Mentions of the economy as the single most important issue in the 2008 election have more than tripled since September.
Falling consumer confidence goes hand-in-hand with a range of other negative economic news – the continued housing and credit crunches, slower-than-expected growth in GDP in the last quarter of 2007, the Dow's worst January in eight years and a report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that employers cut jobs in January for the first time since 2003.
INDEX – ABC's consumer index is based on Americans' ratings of their current finances, the national economy and the buying climate. This week positive ratings of the buying climate are their lowest since 1993, as is the index overall; and views of the national economy are their lowest since 2003.
Just 22 percent now rate the economy positively, down 5 points from last week and down 8 points in two weeks to the fewest since March 2003, and well below the long-term average of 40 percent. Positive ratings of the economy have dropped by 5 points or more in a single week only eight times in the index's history –
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