Kevin Hassett on Consumer Sentiment: We Should Call It ‘Political Sentiment,’ It’s a Political Variable, Not an Economic Variable

RUSH EXCERPT:
HASSETT: "No, I don’t think they’re storm clouds gathering at all added. In fact, let’s start with the consumer sentiment number, because that was a number that was very striking to me into you know when it came in very, very low and what we did is we went to their website and we looked that they actually break it out by political affiliation. So they have it for Democrats, independents, Republicans and if you look at it consumer sentiment at this sort of peak of the Biden, inflation. The stagflation was way above a hundred and it’s dropped all the way down to low thirties now about the lowest it’s ever bed for Democrats, but for Republicans, it’s held up steady and if you look at it, independents and Democrats are really highly correlated with suggests to us that their sample is Democrats. As so, if you go to consumer confidence, which is something that’s actually I think of more scientific survey, the consumer confidence is consistent with all the other positive numbers. We’re seeing right now, but you don’t dispute that the war has taken a toll on parts of the economy right now. Consumer confidence is the highest to spend. An ambulance has to be getting of the year, and so you don’t see a toll. The war on consumer confidence, which is the survey but again GDP. Now the Atlantic as us, would have second quarter. GDP is north of four percent. We’ve got initial claims for unemployment insurance as low as they bed, since the sixties is so there’s so much going on. That is really, I think, surprising people that think that the disruption from the beliefs is going to harm the economy. It’s just not there. The data except for the consumer sentiment data, but actually think that we should stop calling it consumer sentiment start call get political sentiment because. The variables, really it’s really a political variables that and economic variables"