[NeoPeasant]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Heading_for_the_hills', 'J')ust listed on MSNBC-what gives?? MSM trying to make us think all is well?

[jdmartin]

Proof that there is far too much crack on the streets these days...

[mekrob]

Maybe this is like the government saying that the economy is good even though gas, oil and real estate are way up. Like saying that we added half a million acres of wetlands. Instead of reporting facts, they distort them to make them appear what they want them to. In this case, they probably asked the oil companies execs how confident they are in their personal finances.

[arocoun]

That's the thing about consumer confidence--the biggest consumers are the biggest idiots, plain and simple. Consumer confidence may very well continue to go up until the day gas is so expensive that consumers can't make it to the stores.

[TommyJefferson]

There was a thread on the "Consumer Confidence Index" here a couple of weeks ago.

Look into the organization that publishes it and how they arrive at the number.

I'll save you the time. It's silly and not worth your attention, but it does help sell MSM advertising space and allow "investment advisors" to wet their beaks, so it serves the purpose for which it was intended.

[IanC]

I'm sure that this glorious new surge in confidence has something to do with a massive wave of new Credit Card Applications being sent out.

Wow, we're charged to the hilt, but I can apply for my new Titanioplatinumdiamond card and go buy foreign stuff from Walmart afterall. Yay!

I think it's the same doublespeak that reduces all of us to "consumers", "motorists", etc.

[clueless]

I am sure this information came from the same folks who say there is no housing bubble.

We know the collapse is coming, we might as just well enjoy the consensus bubble while it lasts, right ?

[grabby]

Hey:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('newspaper or sumthing', 'C')onsumers shrugged off higher gasoline prices in April and sent a widely watched barometer of consumer confidence to its highest level in almost four years, a private research group said Tuesday.

[drew]

Wow, that's crazy...

I guess we're all cynics here...



Prozac,

more prozac..

Get youir Prozac here....

Drew

[pigleg]

That's called a contrarian indicator - crashes often occur at times of extreme confidence! SELL!

[Lighthouse]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('drew', '.')..

Prozac,

more prozac..

Get youir Prozac here....

Drew

[drew]

It makes a very nice tea too......

That half sounds good btw, but alas it has been many many years since I last partook.

I told my kids that they would get a beating if I ever caught them SMOKING the green stuff, as they all have asthma.

I said that if they must, they should cook, and spare their lungs.

My kids are really good, btw, probably because of all the horror stories I told them from my past.

It is nice they listen (some of the time).

Drew

[MaterialExcess]

It is a lagging indicator. People are most confident just after the good times have past. Looks like we are about to start heading downhill.

[pedalling_faster]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('grabby', '.').. a private research group said Tuesday.

[Jellric]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')hat's called a contrarian indicator

[dinopello]

No, wait - Consumer confidence is at a 7-month low.

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/060505/ipsos_co ... .html?.v=5

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')P
Consumer Confidence Hits 7-Month Low
Friday May 5, 7:38 am ET
By Jeannine Aversa, AP Economics Writer
Consumer Confidence Hits 7-Month Low As Gas Prices Soar


WASHINGTON (AP) -- Consumer confidence sank to a seven-month low as sticker shock from rising gasoline prices made Americans anxious about the economy's prospects and the strain on their own budgets.

[dbarberic]

My college stats professor once said:

"There are lies, damn lies; and then there is statistics".

[Dreamtwister]

Here's the problem. This "private research group" probably gets a bunch of highschool kids to do the survey. these kids, being the product of the American education system ask themselves "Hey, where can we find some consumers?" and they all run to Walmart.

Naturally, all of the consumers who have lost confidence aren't at Walmart right now. They are at home, telling their stock brokers to load up on gold. Of course these highschool half-wits are completely oblivious, and they merrily go on, asking an increasingly distilled pool of stupid consumers how they feel about the economy.

[qwerty]

What do Just More Men, Viagra, and The Men's WareHouse have in common? They all increase the CON-fidence of a man, so he can go out and CON a woman, and they can pop out another CON to help CON the earth out of more resources....


Tell you what,

Everyone is playing the ‘CON’-FIDENCE game because we are deep down all ‘CONS’.
Each and every one of us is an Enron and a WorldCom. A Bush Co and an Is-a-real.

In fact, the whole world and all of its monkey occupants are all in on this greatest grand superheated totally overshot unsustainable pyramid scheme scam hoax of epic proportions. It been so long, so ‘incorporated’ into each and every aspect of our daily lives that we mistake illusion for reality, and reality for illusion. We can to expect it to go on like this forever, taking comfort in its ‘security’.

How do I say this? We live in a world that is upside down and inside out. Everything is exactly the way its not supposed to be. Nothing is what it seems, and the ‘official story’ of anything is always not the truth, nothing is genuine, and we live and die an entire lifetime never knowing who we really are and what kind of monster existence we really lived. I’ll say for the trillionth time, reality is stranger than fiction. The Matrix was a walk in the park…


The US economy [and World Economy too] is being held up by that illusory force known as CON-fidence, and nothing else. We are living a lie; we have always been living on borrowed prosperity that could never be paid back. Wealth does not and cannot exist in a pure vacuum; humanity cannot go on practicing the black art of Zero Point Energy indefinitely, we cannot go on playing the role of Author Anderson for much longer.

Ever since the first bacteria formed on earth it is been playing a primitive version of the con-fidence game. Always hoping to get a bigger piece of the PIE, and by doing so help other fellow bacteria (ie the species) get bigger pieces of PIE. Evolution was about CON-fidence and getting bigger and BETTER pieces of PIE.

Let says a 17-year-old boy decides to study hard on his SAT’s and score high so he can get into a competitive college. Studying hard and earning good GPA gives him more CON-fidence. So he purchases a set of Kaplan self study books. That helps Kaplan’s book sells, and Kaplan writers/publishers get a bigger piece of the PIE. But if Johnny gets that good grade then his investment would return more (HIGH EROEI) which of course is ‘good’. That impact Johnny’s future dramatically, and in his lifetime the difference of a PhD compared to only a HS Diploma is astounding. If Johnny plays his cards right, he will have access to a much bigger piece of PIE later if he invest a little piece of PIE right now… So he buys that Kaplan SAT book.

Now Johnny is 25. Fresh out of College with good prospects for landing that dream job, he now has lots of CON-fidence. And CON-fidence is good because CON-fidence is contagious. It makes others around Johnny feel better, more uplifted, more OPTIMISTIC. And that ‘GOOD’. In particular CON-fidence is a sign of energy accumulation, or in some cases the expectation of potential energy accumulation, or having the means of accumulation massive amounts of energy.

And as we all know, ENERGY IS LIFE. GOD IS ENERGY. LIFEFORCE! Life needs energy like your CPU needs electricity. No energy no life. No electrons no Flight sim…

So Johnny boy is rapped up in this lie that is the world, amazed with all its ‘offerings’ and now he is getting cocky and ‘believing’ in himself. This makes him appear sexy to females. So say Suzy comes along and has her eye on Johnny. Females are hardwired to seek Energy of Mass Reproduction and if Johnny has potential to make lots of fait currency (I mean energy) then Suzy is infatuated and seduced, naturally as all females do associate money with energy with life with ‘sexy’. Johnny finds Suzy attractive and decides with his smaller head immediately that it would be pleasurable to do her. Mother nature decides for him that it would be a good energy investment. Think of it as EROEI for Johnny’s Genes, and for the Homo Sapiens Species in General.

So the two gets married, and immediate Suzy wants a family. Johnny gets a great ‘Job’ at First American Real Estate as a sales agent. The more he sells the more he makes. This increases his CON-fidence. The clients that Johnny sells his products to gladly forfeits upfront a smaller piece of PIE with the EXPECTATION of greater returns on investment, and thus in turn increasing their CON-fidence and also the CON-fidence of their customers. So where this is going??? So Johnny makes money selling crap to other fellow monkeys.

Let me put this in Peak Oil terms for you guys and girls:

Johnny helps himself to a bigger piece of the PIE by helping OTHERS to get a bigger piece of the PIE. It’s a win-win situation, and everyone is ‘HAPPY’, everyone is CON-fidence, life is ‘GOOD’.

Johnny and Suzy have lots of babies and so they need a bigger house. Usually Big house, trophy wife, Hummer cars are status symbols in society that are indicators of massive energy accumulation and the ability to use the already accumulated energy resources as a leverage and advantage to beat other competition and come out ahead with even more energy, and even more CON-fidence.

Johnny decides to buy Hummer, Rolex watch, Pentium Quad Core, $450 US falling Dollar MS Vista 2007, big house. Why? Because these items help Johnny perform at his best, it gives him pleasure, and the tools necessary to perform EVEN better in the future.
Buy being well off, Johnny has the capital and means to use his energy resources to strategically position himself to capture even increasing additional energy! It’s a vicious cycle of perpetual MORE IS MORE IS MORE IS MORE! The more you get, the more services, tools you can buy to help you perform even better, and thus the more you get! Getting bigger pieces of the pie makes Johnny more CON-fidence, and in return being more CON-fidence helps Johnny get even BIGGER pieces of the PIE. And in doing so Johnny and his family has even more money/energy/capital to invest in stock market etc to get access to exponentially bigger pieces of PIE!


This sick cycle never ends. Suzy popped out 10 babies for Johnny. And now as a family Johnny and Suzy want THEIR children to get the best opportunity possible, so that they may grow up to be CON-fidence, to be well positioned in society to earn more MONEY, and get bigger, better more supersized pieces of the PIE. So Johnny spends a lot of money putting his kinds to college, fully EXPECTING a high return on EROEI when the kids get of out college and into the work place. MORE IS MORE…

Doctors get a bigger piece of the PIE by healing people so they can get well and get back to work to get back to getting bigger pieces of the PIE also. Advertisers get their PIE by helping provide services and tools that help their customers get bigger pieces of the PIE. So by helping others get bigger pieces of the PIE, they themselves get bigger PIE.

Lawyers get bigger pieces of the PIE by helping protect the PIE mountains of the super rich, Entertainers (Ophrah, Tom Cruise, M&M, Spears, etc) get bigger pieces of PIE by making people ‘HAPPY’ and ‘FEEL GOOD’ , making them relax and recuperate from a hard week at work, helping people become more efficient and thus by helping an entire society and civilization of zombies all get bigger pieces of PIE they get the largest pieces of PIE.

If you take the time to examine, the whole freaking world exist for the sole purpose of PIE getting….. MORE is more and more is more and more and more .

Its like the social contract of 3.14159265358979323846… ad infintium

By being altruistic to fellow monkeys each monkey herself is calculating that when she is in need she will also receive help from those she helped. This kind of energy exchange is a win-win for all monkeys involved. By helping others in need (donating blood, money, time, resources) each buys ‘insurance’ so that when they fall in need they will get bailed out. Society works like this. When you are nice to someone, you are engaging in an unspoken social insurance contract and thus are increasing the prospects of bigger pieces of PIE for all parties involved.

Why do you think humans are inherently SOCIAL creatures?
Why do you think religion has survived for so long?
Why do you think females like companionship and males like sex?

Its all about the lab rat in the circular exercise machine of fait currency, global pyramid scheme, PIE getting, and petrodollar manipulation..... America is FREEDOM! LOVE IS 'Good'!

Oh Lord. Oh Hallelujah!

Even when you are kind and caring, genuine and loving, you are really just 3.14159


This is the game that never ends.

Its all about CON-fidence and getting bigger pieces of the PIE.


Life is LAME.

Q.E.D.

[jaws]

That's nature for you.