Consumer confidence tumbles in December
U.S. consumer confidence tumbled this month as Americans began to worry that economic growth will moderate next year. But consumer spirits are still high by historic standards.
The Conference Board, a business research group, said Thursday that its consumer confidence index fell to 128.1 in December, down from 136.4 in November and lowest since July.
The index measures consumers’ assessment of current economic conditions and their outlook for the next six months. Both fell in December. Consumers’ expectations for the future dropped to the lowest level since November 2016.
The December readings “still suggest that the economy will continue expanding at a solid pace in the short-term,” said Lynn Franco, the Conference Board’s senior director of economic indicators. “While consumers are ending 2018 on a strong note, back-to-back declines in expectations are reflective of an increasing concern that the pace of economic growth will begin moderating in the first half of 2019.”
For now, the U.S. economy is solid. Economic growth clocked in at a healthy 3.4 percent annual pace from July through September after surging 4.2 percent in the second quarter. At 3.7 percent, the unemployment rate is the lowest in nearly five decades.
Internet outage hits CenturyLink
Some CenturyLink customers across the country were without the internet as outages stretched from New York to California.
The company said in a statement Thursday that its network was “still experiencing a disruption” and that it was working to restore services. It provided no other details, including how many customers were affected.
Jessica Rosenworcel, a member of the Federal Communications Commission, said via Twitter that this was a “nationwide outage” and her agency needed to investigate.
It appeared that most of the trouble was in the West.
The Idaho Statesman reports that the internet problems led to the temporary shutdown of phone services at the Idaho Department of Correction and the state’s Department of Education. There also were reports of ATM machines not working in Idaho and Montana.
30-year mortgage rates dip to 4.55 %
U.S. long-term mortgage rates fell this week, offering a slight degree of relief to would-be homebuyers after the stock market has tumbled.
Mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday that the average rate on the benchmark 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage dipped to 4.55 percent from to 4.62 percent last week. Rates averaged 3.99 percent a year ago.
The average rate for 15-year fixed-rate loans dropped to 4.01 percent from 4.07 percent. Still, that average is above its 3.44 percent level a year ago.
Mortgage rates began to spike after President Donald Trump signed deficit-financed tax cuts into law last year, but rates have eased in recent weeks as stocks have sold-off and the interest charged on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note has tumbled.
The decline in mortgage rates could help boost home sales, which have stumbled this year as higher borrowing costs have worsened affordability.
“The negative headlines around the financial markets are concerning,” said Sam Khater, chief economist at Freddie Mac. “But the economy remains healthy, so the drop in mortgage rates should stem or even reverse the slide in home sales that occurred during the second half of 2018.”
Mexican fuel theft may be inside job
The theft of $3 billion in fuel every year from Mexico’s state-run fuel depots and pipelines is an inside job, the country’s new president said Thursday.
President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said thieves don’t just drill taps into government pipelines. He said company employees steal fuel and distribute it, or help thieves by ensuring fuel continues to run through pipelines.
Mexico’s top prosecutor said criminal investigations have been opened against three employees of the state-owned oil company Pemex for alleged involvement in thefts.
While thieves drill an average of about 42 illegal taps a day, Lopez Obrador said that represents only about 20 percent of losses. The rest was presumably stolen from distribution centers aboard tanker trucks.
“There is a hypothesis that of all the (fuel) thefts, only about 20 percent is done by illegal pipeline taps,” Lopez Obrador said. “It’s a kind of smoke-screen, and the majority is done through a scheme that involves the complicity of authorities and a distribution network.”
Lopez Obrador suggested much of the stolen fuel leaves distribution centers aboard about 600 tanker trucks carrying fuel worth about $10 million every day.