Closed captioning of: Consumer confidence dips in December
>>>
now, speaking of digging out. let's
dig deeper
into the new
consumer confidence
numbers. a private research survey that shows
consumer confidence
dipping in december amid some job worries. we just got that in. some of the estimates would be up. now, we care about
consumer confidence
because it leads to
consumer spending
. when we care about that because it is 70% of the economy. we're now joined by "
wall street journal
" senior economic writer
steve moore
. i was getting this wire in as we were hearing from bill, we're understanding that
consumer confidence
has dipped in december. were you thinking it was actually going to go up?
>>
i sure was,
richard
. just go in the
shopping malls
in the last month or so and you saw people walking around with their
credit card
and the stores were full and as you reported earlier
retail sales
were up substantially. so, i'm very shocked w ed by this number. the one thing i would say,
richard
, i view
consumer confidence
numbers as a
lagging indicator
not a
leading indicator
. i'm still really bullish on the next six month or so. i think we'll see powerful recovery coming with perhaps 4% growth and i think we're going to see, you know, the job numbers come out next week and those look like they're fairly strong.
>>
lagging meaning it is lagging behind in the
rear view mirror
instead of out the front windshield. down slightly from 52.5% to 54.3. what do we need in terms of
consumer confidence
to show that we're getting back to that place where we'll have more jobs?
>>
what's more important than how people respond to these surveys, how people are actually spending and what they're actually doing with their money and that's where we see some positive results.
richard
, one thing you said a couple minutes ago, that was some of the new numbers you reported about housing because i'm a big believer that we're not going to fully get out of this terrible and lengthy recession until we see a turn around in the
housing market
. the housing collapse is what got us into this crisis in the first place. i was really quite disturbed by some of those numbers that reported that prices are still dipping a little bit. that suggests to me,
richard
, we haven't hit bottom.
>>
those were the two keys legs that we were waiting for. we talk about the
housing market
and jobs. housing how does that relate to jobs and what we're seeing right now?
>>
the two are just intertwined because it's self-evident if somebody doesn't have a job or a full-time job, it becomes very difficult for them to pay their morgue mortgage. if they can't pay their mortgage, they foreclose. you can see there is this cycle and what we have to do is get out of this
vicious cycle
and hopefully as we see
job growth
next year people will start to be able to afford houses. they will be able to afford paying their mortgages and a decline in foreclosures. that's what i have my fingers crossed hoping that will happen some time in the next few month.
>>
we did that this morning. based on the estimate that the
consumer confidence
number would go up showing perhaps we will see more jobs go up in
2011
. hopefully more positive news in the new year. stee
steve moore
, thank you so much.
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