Trump emerges as ‘prime suspect’ in economic mystery stumping experts: economist

A top economist believes he has finally solved why Americans feel so lousy about an economy that looks healthy on paper.University of Michigan economist Justin Wolfers made his case Wednesday in his Substack newsletter Platypus Economics, pinning much of the national gloom on a record collapse in public faith in how President Donald Trump's administration is handling the economy.Wolfers wrote that cable news hosts keep putting the same question to him. "Our economic statistics look pretty good, so why are Americans so gloomy?"The University of Michigan's consumer sentiment index registered roughly 52 this summer, almost exactly where it stood in May 1980. Back then, unemployment was close to 8 percent, and inflation was running near 14 percent. Today, joblessness sits at about half that rate, and price growth is roughly a quarter of it, according to Wolfers.Using decades of data on prices and jobs, Wolfers built a model to estimate...