Consumers Less Gloomy as War Begins -Poll
Wed Apr 2, 2:11 PM ET Add Business - Reuters to My Yahoo!
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NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. consumers have become a bit more optimistic on the economy since the start of the war in Iraq (news - web sites), a Gallup poll released on Wednesday showed.
The March 29-30 poll, taken before recent advances by U.S.-led forces boosted equity markets, found 33 percent of respondents thought the outlook for the economy was getting better, up from just 23 percent before the war began.
"Americans are rallying around the economy, just as they are supporting President Bush (news - web sites)'s decision to launch an attack on Iraq," said Lydia Saad, Senior Gallup Poll Editor. "This rally is a departure from the downward trend in consumer confidence that was underway through early March."
Still, consumers were not quite so upbeat on current economic conditions, with 26 percent rating them as good or excellent against 22 percent early in March, said the Gallup Poll Tuesday Briefing. In turn, 51 percent judged the economy as only fair and 23 percent said it was poor.
However, "consumer confidence is not necessarily indicative of consumer behavior, specifically retail spending. The economic impact of sudden rallies in consumer attitudes in times of national crisis or military interventions is particularly hard to gauge," said Saad.
Consumer surveys conducted earlier in March, such as that by the Conference Board (news - web sites), recorded sharp falls in confidence as anxiety built before the war.
More recent polls have found the start of hostilities seemed to resolve some of the uncertainty felt by Americans.
Gallup said it would be updating its poll more frequently to capture the rapidly changing mood of consumers and another survey was likely next week.
The March 29-30 results were based on telephone interviews with a randomly selected national sample of 1,012 adults, aged 18 and older. |
