Good Saturday Morning, Everyone. We have another nice, sunny day today. It is already a bit warm outside so I am glad all my necessary garden work is done. Yesterday afternoon I found that two of the tomatoes I started from seeds are already starting to bloom as are a couple of the peppers I got as seedlings from Home Depot. Everything is growing so fast you can almost watch them grow. I found one of my nine broccoli has been dined upon but I cant find what has eaten it. I will have to get my insecticidal soap out and give it a shot.

I decided to check out something that had perplexed me for some time: consumer confidence--how is it determined and what does it mean. I found this little site that explained some of it and I can't think of a more meaningless statistic. Pollsters call up 5000 randomly selected and, allegedly, representative households and ask how the consumers are feeling about the economy. Most of the economic talking heads on the various business reports cite the uptick in consumer 'confidence' as though it really means that the consumer is 'back' and willing to spend as freely as they once did. Just how meaningless is this statistic? Take a look at the data for actual consumer spending at this story from MSNBC.