Sentiment (prelminary) below consensus.
Figure 1: U.Michigan Economic Sentiment (blue), Conference Board Confidence Index (brown), Gallup Confidence (green), all demeaned and divided by standard deviation 2021M01-2025m02. May observation is preliminary. Source: UMichigan, Gallup, Conference Board, and author’s calculations.
Figure 2: U.Michigan 1 year inflation expectations (blue), 5 year (tan). May observation is preliminary. Source: UMichigan.
The decline in May in the sentiment and expectations measures is mostly due to declines a.ong Republinans. Democrats and swingers had already decided to worry.
This is no big deal for the felon-in-chief. One way or another, votes won’t matter to his employment ever again. It matters lots to swing-state Republicans, and fairly soon.
Off topic – sanction on Russia. Anybody have the facts on this:
https://www.rt.com/news/617644-us-sanctions-russia-oil-pipeline/
RT news, an English-language outlet for Russian propaganda, reports that the U.S. Treasury has eased sanctions on the Caspian Oil Pipeline. The Caspian Pipeline carris oil from Kazahkstan through Russian territory. RT links to the Office of Foreign Asset Control as its source, but when I follow the link, I find the original sanction announcement from January, but no indication that Treasury has since eased them. RT is the only place I can find press coverage of a change in sanctions.
Anybody have a source for this that isn’t a wholly owned subsidiary of Pooty-Poot?
Off topic – DOGE @ GAO? DOA:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/gao-rejects-doge-attempt-land-204334014.html
‘Cause why not just ignore the separation of powers? That’s what teenagers do.