What timing. Yesterday I blog about optimism and pessimism and February results are released shortly thereafter that consumer confidence plunged the most in 27 years.

68 EXPERT ECONOMISTS predicted the number to fall in the range of 50-58. The January number was around 56. The actual number came in at around 46. NOT ONE OF THE EXPERTS WAS EVEN CLOSE.

This is exactly what happened in September 2008 when the economy collapsed. Not a single expert in forecasting, banking or politics predicted the course of events that would wipe out trillions and lead to the precariously situation we are in today.

IF THE EXPERTS ARE WRONG, WHAT CHANCE DOES THE REST OF US HAVE?

How much confidence do USA consumers have in Toyota right now? How much confidence do seniors in high school have in U-M’s football program? How much confidence do we have in Obama’s health care proposal passing?

The endgame dictates that we must have confidence to move forward. Gallup Organization includes confidence as one of their four key principles in engagement and this is the lowest one of the four. If we can’t even exude confidence, what chances are that the higher up principles can ever take form: Integrity, Pride, and Passion? Zero.

Consumer’s are saying that they are fed up with political infighting, wars, unemployment, indignant CEO’s, higher taxes and the list goes on.

Locally, two suburban communities, Troy and Clawson, easily rejected millage requests slamming the local communities into action. Residents are saying cut your costs, we have cut ours. People are fed up.

But if we expect government to bail us out, we are all in deeper trouble than we think. We need to take a leap of faith and block out the external crap and focus on our own “confidence” day by day. Here at TNG, we are seeing huge breakthroughs being made in technology, marketing, new products and logistics through individual efforts. This is what we need to move forward.

Right now I’m most excited about a disposable razor. I’ll explain later.

Happy Wednesday!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 24th, 2010 at 11:23 am and is filed under Consumer confidence, Gallup, Gallup organization. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.