RUSH: This headline from Reuters: “Consumer Confidence Eases, Inflation View Jumps.” What is…? When you hear that headline, if you could imagine yourself reading it, “Consume Confidence Eases…” Now, what’s happened here is consumer confidence has plummeted. That’s what’s happened. But the use the word “eases” invokes “eases off” or… It does not convey the truth by any stretch. “Inflation View Jumps.” That doesn’t tell you anything. “Americans this month ratcheted up their expectations on inflation to the highest level in 10 months…” Now, even that is misleading. It’s almost like it’s positive because expectations are always portrayed in a positive way. Now, what this means is, the American people expect inflation to go through the roof, which is a bad thing, and nobody wants that (well, very few people).
“Americans this month ratcheted up their expectations on inflation…” Ratcheted up! Oh, yeah, the American people are feeling much better about expectations. That’s what these clowns at Reuters want you to believe. “Americans this month ratcheted up their expectations on inflation to the highest level in 10 months”! Wow, we’re doing great on inflation here, folks! The people have never been happier in the last ten months over inflation. And the rest of the sentence is: “consumer confidence waned, though the economic recovery was still seen on track.
“Separate data on Tuesday showed home prices were unchanged in January from December…” Home prices are now at the levels of 2001! There’s nothing good about this. There’s nothing positive in this story. But you’d be hell-bent to find the truth even if you read it. You need a seasoned, trained professional like me going through this stuff for you. “A report from industry group The Conference Board showed the index of consumer attitudes eased [laughing] to 70.2 from an upwardly revised 71.6 the month before, roughly in line with economists’ expectations…”
No, consumer confidence didn’t “ease” off. It plunged! It fell. Inflation is skyrocketing, led by gasoline prices, and yet doesn’t matter, ’cause “the economic recovery was still seen on track.” “The details of the report were mixed as…” I wouldn’t-a bothered with this except this whole thing is written as totally misleading, purposely so. “Consumer Confidence Eases,” and inflation doesn’t jump — just “the views” of inflation jumped? I’m telling you, folks, this is another indication of how bad it is — and I’m talking about through the prism of the Obama reelection. That’s how bad the economic news is. When these efforts are expended to hide it and, in fact, to make it look like something else.