UMich Sentiment Collapses Near 45-Year (Record) Lows As Democrats’ Inflation Dissonance Hits ’11’

Having embarrassed themselves with their TDS-driven cognitive dissonance over the past few months, Democrat-voting UMich respondents in the preliminary May survey (a month after Liberation Day and also post-Pause and the massive meltup in stocks)

Consumer Expectations are now at their lowest since – drum roll please… May 1980…

Source: Bloomberg

Tariffs were spontaneously mentioned by nearly three-quarters of consumers, up from almost 60% in April; uncertainty over trade policy continues to dominate consumers’ thinking about the economy. 

Note that interviews for this release were conducted between April 22 and May 13, closing two days after the announcement of a pause on some tariffs on imports from China.

The percentage of UMich respondents making unsolicited negative comments about news they’ve heard on government economic policy has surged to a record high of 66%!

Source: Bloomberg

The share of consumers expecting unemployment to rise in the year ahead increased for the sixth consecutive month and is now more than double the November 2024 reading and the highest since 2009.

Source: Bloomberg

Year-ahead inflation expectations surged from 6.7% last month to 7.3% this month, the highest reading since 1981 and marking five consecutive months of unusually large increases of 0.5 percentage points or more.

Source: Bloomberg

This month’s rise was seen across all three political affiliations. Long-run inflation expectations climbed from 4.4% in April to 4.6% in May, reflecting a particularly large jump among Democrats to a ridiculous 9.6% over the next year!!

Source: Bloomberg

Republicans did forecast a rise in their view of 5Y inflation expectations (while Democrats were flat at 5.1%)…

Source: Bloomberg

Spot the odd one out - UMich Democrats, The NY Fed, or The Market…

Source: Bloomberg

One more for fun – comparing Democrats view of the inflationary outlook to the ‘hard’ inflationary data…

Source: Bloomberg

Finally, given their historic track record (completely refusing to acknowledge the surge in inflation under Biden), should we simply be ignoring the manic Democrats screaming about inflation now?

Source: Bloomberg

The Republicans seemed to get it? But then again, they’re all racist ignoramuses with no PhDs… so there’s that, right!?

So someone is lying: actual spending all time high while reported sentiment (based on 250 polled UMich respondents) is all time low.

Is the soft-data slump all driven by leftists imbibing mainstream media’s desperate propaganda-fueled terror of what Trump is doing?

Perhaps that explains why soft survey data has started to turn back up to hard data reality in the last week as it’s hard to hate and keep pushing out your depression-era forecasts when stocks are at record highs and jobless claims remain near record lows.