It's the Brian Larra Show on WNYC. Good morning everyone and we begin with some good news today.

In fact, more good economic news from over Thanksgiving weekend adding to the spate of positive economic indicators lately.

This includes prices on some major items going down, not just going up more slowly,

after all the concerns about inflation, after all the actual inflation of the last few years.

From what I've read, things actually getting cheaper now include everybody's favorite indicator, gasoline.

Also airplane tickets, gasoline.

Also airplane tickets, electronics,

including cell phones, televisions, computers,

also sheets and towels, get ready for those white sales,

and also the cost of a typical Thanksgiving dinner actually down

from last year. Also Black Friday and Thanksgiving weekend sales, this is the new good news,

are reported to have hit record levels online

although the mob scenes at big box stores on black Friday morning seem to maybe be

kind of a comic relic of the past at this point with so much shopping of all kinds apparently shifting

more permanently online even post- Pandemic.

Overall the Wall Street Journal reports Black Friday spending was strong but despite all these positive economic indicators, polls show

Americans still very sour on the state of the economy and that has political

implications for 2024.

So Catherine Rampel joins us to discuss.

She is an opinion columnist at the Washington Post.

Politics and Economics Commentator at CNN,

special correspondent for the PBS News Hour, and a

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