00:00We're getting consumer confidence, new home sales also coming in.
00:03Consumer confidence for August, weaker than expected.
00:06Let's bring in Michael McKee, Bloomberg's international economics and policy correspondent.
00:11Mike, what are you looking at?
00:13Well, what we're looking at are people discouraged about what's going to be happening in this country.
00:18It's largely in the expectations index.
00:21Headline comes in at 89.4, down from a revised 90.2.
00:27And then the present situation rises to 121.2 from 114.9.
00:35Now, the expectations index is a big drop, 68.2 from 74.4.
00:42And so it looks like people are not happy about the direction of the country at the moment.
00:48We have a couple of other eco data points coming out now.
00:53New home sales come in weaker than expected.
00:56607,000 annual rate, down from 678,000 last month.
01:01It's a 10.5% drop.
01:04Also, the Richmond Fed Manufacturing Index comes in at 4.
01:09That's down from 5.
01:11It was expected to rise to 7.
01:13And then the Business Conditions Index is negative 12 from negative 5.
01:18So there certainly is a lot of unhappiness out there, both, it looks like, on CEO's point of view from
01:26the Richmond area and the Conference Board Consumer Confidence.
01:30The fall in, obviously, the new home sales is no surprise given what we've seen with mortgage rates recently.
01:38The fall in, obviously.
Comments