The Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers released its August report and the consumer will not be pulling the economy out of its current damaged state. The Sentiment Index was 68.9 in the August 2010 survey, slightly above the…
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The Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers released its August report and the consumer will not be pulling the economy out of its current damaged state.
The Sentiment Index was 68.9 in the August 2010 survey, slightly above the 67.8 in July and last year’s 65.7.
The release came just hours after the Department of Commerce revised second quarter GDP improvement to 1.6% from 2.4%, primarily because of strength in imports and changes in inventory figures. Taken together and added to housing data from earlier this week, the numbers combine to show an American economy that has fallen back into recession.
The overall level of confidence remained largely unchanged in August as consumers did not panic in the face of slowing economic growth and the media’s double-dip drumbeat. The bad news is that consumers expect lackluster income and job growth for an extended period of time. This “new normal” outlook has encouraged consumers to pare down their debts and increase their reserve funds.
Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.
McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.
His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.
A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.
TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.
McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.
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ThinkstockThe Reuters/University of Michigan consumer sentiment index was released on Friday morning. Consumer sentiment for mid-August was reported at 79.2. The Bloomberg economists estimate was much higher at 82.3, and the range of estimates was 80.0 to…
