This is Planet Money from NPR.

Consumer sentiment is not doing great right now.

It is close to its lowest point in half a century.

Americans are, on average, not optimistic about the health of the economy.

They don't feel great about their jobs, their personal finances.

And when consumers don't feel hopeful about the economy, we usually do this one thing.

We save more and stop spending as much. You can see it in the data. When consumer sentiment is low,

consumer spending slows down. Consumer spending and consumer sentiment are like buddies that go everywhere together.

Yes, but Sarah, these buddies, something strange is happening to their friendship.

They're drifting apart. Yeah, consumer sentiment is like sad in his sweats on the couch, doing nothing.

Well, okay, yeah, but consumer spending is out there living it up, spending untold amounts

of money out all hours of the night at the club?

She sure is.

And when Deeran, Patky, an economist at the Boston Fed, saw this rift, I mean, it's mostly

bafflement, right?

We see these two numbers, which are significant measures

of barometers of economic activity, moving in ways that look discordant with each other.

That gives rise to a question about why that might be happening.

For some reason, despite many not-so-great economic factors, not just the low consumer sentiment, consumer spending is strong.

And it's making the economy look pretty good, resilient, actually.

But is it?

Hello and welcome to Planet Money. I'm Sarah Gonzalez.

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