Welcome to the Jill on Money Show. It's Friday, March 21st, and we are here trying to help you make sense of this gushing flow of news that you are trying to absorb. It's very difficult. I get it. So when I feel somewhat overwhelmed, I go to people who are much smarter than I am.

That is why I am delighted for this broadcast to bring you, Diane Swank.

She is the chief economist at KPMG, US.

She absolutely always makes sense of short-term and long-term trends. And when I interviewed her last

week, it had just been like kind of that grueling week in the market, but also we had gotten

two data releases around consumer confidence. She was very, she had really was able to help

me understand how our feelings

can translate into different behavior. So with that said, if you have any questions about this

or what's going on in the economy or does this raise an issue for you, then just go to jill

onmoney.com, click the contact us button, write us a note. And of course, please

let us know if you want to join us on the air live. We love having you right now. Totally

enjoy this because I love her. Diane Swank, chief economist at KPMG. One time a million years ago,

you told me something. I actually went back and looked at some old notes. And you said,

you know, one of the reasons I went into economics is that like it really can help change public

policy. And now it feels like public policy is really changing the economy. So can you paint,

first let's do this. Paint a picture of where the U.S. economy stood on January 2nd of this year.

What was going on?

On January 2nd, we were in a period where we had just seen a bump in consumer attitudes, a bump in CEO attitudes.

There was an election bump.

And we saw the economy entering the year with a lot of

momentum. Consumer spending in December accelerated. And we had this compressed holiday season, but it was on

running on all engines. I spent a lot of time last year talking about something I call mine the gap,

...