CNN’s Rampell: Consumers Think Economy Is Bad Because They’re ‘Wrongly Anticipating that Grocery Prices Are Going to Go Back to What They Were’

EXCERPT:

RAMPELL: “The typical consumer, they're still pretty dour about the U.S. economy, but on paper, the U.S. economy looks pretty darn great, certainly better than most of our peer countries around the world. GDP growth is strong, investment is strong, unemployment is not at an all-time low, but close to historic lows. Inflation is, you know, always the outlier here, but even that has come down quite a bit, and it's not at the target, but it's far below what its peak had been, and kind of a stone's throw from where the Federal Reserve would like it to be. All of those things suggest that the economy is doing quite well, that, you know, we seem to, you know, knock on wood, have pulled up, potentially pulled off, this desired soft landing that the Federal Reserve has been trying to achieve. Now, that doesn't mean that consumers are making things up, obviously, when they are frustrated by the economy, because the price increases that we saw a couple of years ago are still very salient, you know, people are still experiencing price shock every time they go to the grocery store, and perhaps wrongly anticipating that grocery prices are going to go back to what they were, which is not going to happen.”