Consumer Sentiment Just Shattered a 70-Year Record: Is the Economy Finally Breaking?

There is a story making the rounds on financial media right now. It goes something like this: the economy is strong, the consumer is resilient, and anyone bearish is either too pessimistic or...conveniently...selling something.

Here is a different story.

Picture a trading floor, circa 2011. Every trader, every analyst, every CNBC type in the building is holding a Blackberry. Not an iPhone. A Blackberry. Based on that one-block radius, the conclusion seems obvious: Blackberry is the future.

The only problem? The rest of the country stopped using Blackberry years ago.

That is the Wall Street bubble in its purest form. A closed loop of self-confirming data from people who never leave the building. And right now, that same dynamic is shaping how mainstream finance is characterizing the US economy. The view from the hedge fund desk looks very different from the view at the gas pump.

The data this week made that gap impossible to ignore. Consumer sentiment hit a level never recorded in the history of the survey. The yield curve is sending a warning signal that the bulls would rather not discuss. And underneath the flat, seemingly boring DXY reading, the dollar is quietly destroying economies across Asia and Latin America in ways that will not stay quiet for much longer.

So if Wall Street is still staring at Blackberry charts... what does the real economy actually look like right now?