President Donald Trump talks to reporters before departing from the White House for Davos on January 20, 2026. KTIIt feels silly to talk about quotidian economics while <gestures broadly> all of this is going on. So let’s do this thing: The economy is not good. The Conference Board’s monthly consumer confidence survey came out this week and the results were grim. Consumer confidence is now at the lowest level since 2014—worse than it was at any moment during the pandemic, even.