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Friday, April 17, 2026

17: India

Lies, Damned Lies and Economic Vibes The continuing mystery of feel-bad economics .............. Inflation was stubbornly elevated even before the Iran debacle, while growth has been sluggish. Jobs for entry-level workers are hard to find while mortgage and car loan rates are up. Gas-pump prices are above $4 on average and around 10 million Americans are projected to lose health insurance by 2028. Yet the one economic variable that stands out, that really is like nothing anyone has ever seen before,is consumer confidence: The long-running University of Michigan index of consumer sentiment just hit its lowest point ever recorded. .............. the worst consumer sentiment in history — worse than during the stagflation at the end of the 1970s, worse than in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. ...................

the current extremely negative sentiment is a result of Americans’ correct sense that they have been lied to.

............ Kyla Scanlon coined the term “vibecession” in 2022 for a situation in which people feel bad about an economy that doesn’t look that bad by the numbers. But the puzzle has intensified over time, both because the bad feelings have gotten worse and because the vibecession has been so persistent. ............ since 2022 Americans have felt much worse about the economy than conventional economic measures say they “should.” ........... consumer sentiment is much worse now than it was in 2023 and 2024. ................ it’s about the price level as opposed to the rate of inflation. ........ The U.S. experienced a bout of high inflation in 2021-22, largely because of disruptions to supply chains in the aftermath of Covid, plus fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This inflation spurt ended as supply chains became unsnarled and oil prices stabilized, and inflation since 2023 has been only modestly higher than it was pre-Covid. However, prices have never come back down and have remained persistently higher than the pre-2020 trend would have predicted. ........... consumers aren’t fully mollified by the fact that inflation — the rate at which prices are rising — has slowed. They’re angry and upset that the level of prices remains much higher than they expected.

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