Consumer Sentiment Falls in in November; Media Blames 'Fiscal Cliff'

     Yes, if you denote a little skepticism in the title, you're radar is turned on. It's just that when a CNBC piece that is written by journalists has such blatant editorializing, I got to be a little skeptical. I mean who knows what moves consumer sentiment in the short term? It seems that the spike we saw in September was thanks to partisan Democrats-like me-getting more optimistic after listening to Bill Clinton's convention speech.

    So, anything in the short term could move the needle. Still, I'm a little skeptical about this CNBC piece here:

    "Americans' outlook on the economy and their finances took a turn for the worst in early December due likely to anxiety about higher taxes from the budget stalemate in Washington, a survey released on Friday showed.

     "The Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan's preliminary reading in the overall index on consumer sentiment plunged to 74.5 in early December, the lowest level since August."

     "It was far below November's figure of 82.7 and the median forecast of 82.4 among economists polled by Reuters."

    "It seems that the average household is now paying attention to the fiscal cliff and that is the key takeaway from this report," said Tom Porcelli, a chief U.S. economist at RBC Capital Markets. "In recent months it surprisingly held up well even with the fiscal cliff headlines, but with the media picking up on the fiscal cliff even more people are now paying attention to it and the pullback in confidence is a reflection of that.''

     http://www.cnbc.com/id/100289812

      I mean, anything is possible. It's possible that with the media awash in headlines about the coming Fiscal Cliff people are fearing the worst. The world's about to end. Maybe the same thing happened in December 2000, just before Y2K took it's shot and it's weapon turned out to be a little cap gun that went "bang."

     How seriously does the man in the street take the fiscal cliff? Who knows. But the cynical part of me-which admittedly is a major part of me-can't help but wonder if the business press is trying to worry the President and reconsider his "intransigence."