A consumer confidence game

Cowboy hat By Jim Hightower - Sat., 4/1/00

Hot diggity dog! The Consumer Confidence Index hit an all-time high of 144.7 in January

But . . . a-hundred-forty-four-point-seven what?

What the hell is this index? Every month, news outlets unquestioningly report this little statistic. We're told that it's issued by something called the Conference Board, that it's derived from a survey of 5,000 U.S. households, and that it measures the confidence we consumers have in the economy.

Despite the official sounding name, the Conference Board is not a government agency or academic institution—it's a service company for brand name corporations that buy its reports, including Aetna, BankAmerica, Exxon, GE, Wal Mart, and Xerox. As one analyst says bluntly, "The purpose of the Conference Board is to promote business, and it is dedicated to good news for business."

Its "survey of 5,000 U.S. households" turns out to be a multiple choice questionnaire asking 16 questions, nine of which are marketing queries, like what brand of refrigerator do you plan to buy? The 5,000 households are drawn from a pre selected, unrepresentative, pool of less than 1% of us.

Yet the media uses this hokey index to tell us that everything is rosy and consumers are not merely upbeat—they're at 144.7! If you're feeling only about a 120 or maybe a 72.3, there must be something wrong with you, Bucko.



Filed Under: Corporate greed