Conference Board confidence index at 92.9 vs. 94.2 consensus. Here’s confidence vs. U.Mich sentiment (all standardized).
Figure 1: U.Michigan Economic Sentiment (blue), Conference Board Confidence Index (brown), Gallup Confidence (green), all demeaned and divided by standard deviation 2021M01-2025m02. Source: UMichigan, Gallup, Conference Board, and author’s calculations.
Here’s the expectations vs. current situation picture:
Update, 3:36pm CT:
Substituting SF News Sentiment index, per suggestion Paweł Skrzypczyński:
Figure 2: U.Michigan Economic Sentiment (blue), Conference Board Confidence Index (brown), SF Fed News Sentiment-Shapiro-Sudhof-Wilson (light green), all demeaned and divided by standard deviation 2021M01-2025m02. March observation for SSW index is through 3/23. Source: UMichigan, Conference Board, SF Fed, and author’s calculations.
Off topic – Now that Netanyahu is back to slaughtering Palestinians by the hundreds, perhaps we don’t need more evidence of war crimes. But then, the felon-in-chief has declared speech made in resistance to war crimes is itself a crime, and both major parties hand weapons to Israel to allow more killing, so perhaps we do.
From Israel’s Ynet:
When (chief of staff Herzi) Halevi presented the IDF’s operations to the cabinet in the first 48 hours of the war, he noted that the Air Force had attacked 1,500 targets in Gaza. This is a huge number, requiring exceptional intelligence and operational capabilities. Netanyahu erupted in anger, yelling and banging on the table. “Why not 5,000?” he scolded the Chief of Staff. “We don’t have 5,000 approved targets,” Halevi replied. “I’m not interested in targets,” Netanyahu retorted. “Take down houses, bomb with everything you have.”
https://www.ynet.co.il/yedioth/article/yokra14303894
Bomb houses, without any reason to think those houses are anything other than places where Palestinians live. Hospitals, mosques, refugee camps, food distribution centers, schools, UN and Red Cross facilities – Israel has killed innocent Palestinians anywhere they congregated, always claiming that Hamas was present, rarely showing evidence. Apparently, a final solution to the “Palestine problem” doesn’t require evidence.
Not entirely off topic – Saturday’s Washington Post carries this headline :
Tax revenue could drop by 10 percent amid turmoil at IRS
“Senior tax officials are bracing for a sharp drop in revenue collected this spring, as an increasing number of individuals and businesses spurn filing their taxes or attempt to skip paying balances owed to the Internal Revenue Service…”
https://archive.is/0VIgf
The near top-of-range estimate for the drop in revenue is $500 billion per year. That’s about 10% of IRS collections in 2024. The cause of the expected decline is non-compliance with tax law, the result of the firing of 11,000 IRS employees and plans to increase layoffs to 20,000.
Just to be clear, the problem isn’t with W2 earnings. Taxing W2 earnings is the simplest, most easily policed and enforced part of our federal revenue system. Resentful richies are the problem – they have the means and the desire to duck taxes. There is already a big problem with income distribution, and letting richies off the hook for taxes only makes it worse.
Look who vote against Democrats in 2024. The 2nd and 3rd income quintiles voted Republican in greater numbers than anybody else. The so-called “working class”, the Democratic base of legend, voted for the Republicans who are destroying the parts of the tax-collection system that collect from richies. Then, with an additional $500 billion he in revenues, they’ll have yet another excuse to destroy Social Security.
We should be able to tell how bad the problem is – initially, anyhow – pretty quickly. Monthly budget data should show whether revenue collections are down. There may be some confusion about cause, as slower revenue collection is often seen as evidence of economic slowing, rarely as a change in compliance.
So, Democratic leaders, by all means keep shifting in whatever direction the GOP is going. No need to have actual policies to help workers, as long as there is no daylight between you and your Republican rivals. Never, ever, ever plant your feet.
Speaking of policies that threaten to reduce tax collections:
https://www.axios.com/2025/03/25/ice-irs-undocumented-immigrants-taxes
The IRS has not shared identifying information from tax records with ICE in the past, but may do so now. That gives illegal immigrants reason to stop paying taxes. The article tosses out a “for example” estimate of reduced compliance that churns out a $28 billion reduction in revenue. That’s an order of magnitude smaller than the loss expected due to IRS layoffs, but it ain’t nuthin’.