What are you giving gross domestic product for the holidays?

I'm David Brancaccio in Los Angeles.

A fresh survey from the National Association for Business Economics finds sentiment among corporate economists moving slightly toward the optimism range in the last month.

No big changes are expected from this group in the coming year, but a slight

increase in economic growth and a slight downtick in inflation is predicted. Economist Julia

Coronado is founder of macro policy perspectives. Hello. Good morning. Back used to run the

NABE here, but they're looking a little bit more optimistic from a month earlier?

So expectations for growth for next year were boosted a little bit, but also expectations

for inflation were boosted a little bit, and therefore economists expect less fed easing

in terms of rate cuts next year as well. So all of those

things kind of go together. All right. Well, I mean, a little bit more optimism, I suppose,

is better than a little less optimism. Now, the Wall Street Journal's been reporting,

all of us are reporting, on retail sales during what is now the holiday

shopping season. And there's a piece today that says, yeah, shoppers are shopping. They're going to be

spending more at cheaper places like T.J. Max and Walmart. What does that tell you? Well, it tells us that consumers are stretched. Prices have risen,

and they're looking for deals. And we hear this a lot, that consumers are very price sensitive,

and they're going to try to stretch that dollar this holiday season. Economist Julia Coronado

is also a professor at the University of Texas, Austin. Thank you so much.

My pleasure.

And zooming in on this season where the culture keeps bugging us to shop, there are fresh numbers there.

Deloitte says the 1,200 shoppers they surveyed plan to spend 4% less than last year between Black Friday and Cyber Monday, citing high prices and

financial constraints. Low-income consumers plan to spend 12% less this year. Even shoppers making

...