What is the effect of the rising stock market values?
DANIEL YANKELOVICH: The rise of stock market values is one of the factors that is fueling the rage for consumption. I think that the seeming desire of Americans today to consume everything in sight is temporary. There is a pent-up demand. The period from the late 1980s until about 1995-1996 was a period where people felt poor, the opposite of the wealth effect. They are just beginning to enjoy the comfort of the trends that started in 1995, and we are now moving into a psychology of affluence where people are a little bit excessive and kind of digging into their savings and going into debt. So I don’t think that this bulge, this excess, will – I think it’ll taper off, but it will still be on the positive side as long as the economy is tracking positive. I believe that the rise in the stock market does help make the economy grow faster, because two-thirds of the economy is driven by the consumer. And as long as the stock market is going up, the wealth effect is in place, people feel tha
