I hear that consumer confidence is down again. That’s one piece of news we can bank on: Consumer confidence is always down in the winter.

The last time consumers were confident, they put everything on their credit cards. It might be some time before that exuberance returns. This doesn’t surprise me any; consumer confidence is always low when the bills come due. Most folks lose their fiscal bravado several times a year.

I get a kick out of TV reporters interviewing Christmas shoppers. Each fall the reporters show up in shopping malls to get a grip on consumer sentiment. They talk with storekeepers and shoppers to see how everyone feels about all the stuff they’re buying. Then we hear about it on the evening news.

Invariably, the news people show a lady with her arms full of packages and saying, “Oh, I don’t know. The economy is so bad, I don’t think we are going to buy much this year.”

I always want to shout, “Then what are you doing in the stores? Get out of the mall. Go home and save some money!”

That’s kind of old-fashioned, I guess. What is consumer confidence if not the ability to buy things we can’t afford? Just recently I read that consumer confidence is so puny these days that people are actually saving money.

There’s a vicious rumor for you; the last time folks saved their money was years ago.

Those were the days before credit cards, government grants and deficit financing. People paid cash, made do or did without. It all seems sort of quaint now.

Years ago my wife and I stopped at a little grocery in northern California to buy something for lunch. A sign behind the counter said. “Sorry, we cannot put deli sandwiches on credit.” And a sign on the register said, “All grocery accounts must be paid by the 15th of each month.”

“Can you imagine someone charging a sandwich?” I asked my wife. “If I couldn’t afford a deli sandwich, I think I would find something a little less expensive.”

Then, we drove down the road to San Francisco and spent the night. The hotel charged us to park the car, and a cup of coffee cost more than I expected the next morning. Folks were running around like crazy, wanting $20 for this and $30 for that. 

I kept thinking about the plight of the cities and their need for more funds, but I couldn’t feel sorry for them. I can’t imagine why city people choose to live the way they do.

I just wanted to ask, “Hey, what’s the matter with you folks? If you’d move up the road a couple hundred miles, you could park your car for nothing – and buy deli sandwiches with the money saved.”

Readers with questions or comments for Roger Pond may write to him in care of this publication.