Consumer confidence slipped to a two-year low this week -- just in time for the holidays.
With retailers anxiously eyeing their prospects, the ABC News/Washington Post Consumer Comfort Index hit -21 on its scale of +100 to -100, down 6 points in the last three weeks to its lowest since October 2005, just after Hurricane Katrina.
Among the index's three components, just 31 percent call it a good time to spend money now -- again a two-year low. That comports with initial suggestions that while holiday shoppers are turning out, they may be looking for bargains, and spending less.
Consumer gloom is not recent: The ABC/Post index has labored in negative double digits for 16 weeks, its longest run at that level since an 18-week period after Katrina nailed the Gulf Coast and sent gas prices soaring.
There's plenty of fuel for today's discontent: Gasoline's at $3.10 a gallon (it peaked at $3.06 post-Katrina), oil prices have set new nominal records just as temperatures headed down, the housing and credit shocks keep coming and the stock market's been shaky.
INDEX -- The ABC/Post CCI is based on Americans' ratings of their personal finances, the national economy and the buying climate. Ratings of the buying climate are down 5 points in three weeks, and 12 points below their 2007 high last March.
A similar 33 percent rate the national economy positively, steady the past month but still low compared with a 2007 high of 48 percent.
Ratings of personal finances, the strongest of the measures, are showing signs of strain -- 55 percent rate them positively, 4 points below the 2007 average and the fewest in nearly three months. They've edged down from a recent high of 61 percent in early October, and are now just 2 points off their 2007 low, 53 percent in late August.
TREND -- At -21, the CCI matches its level of Oct. 30, 2005, very near its post-Katrina low, -23 in mid-September '05.
Despite its current slump the CCI has averaged -9 this year, matching its long-term average and setting it up for its best year since 2001, when it was averaged +4. But that owes to a strong start: The index averaged –2 in the first three months of the year, even brushing into the elusive positive zone in February and March.
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