“When you see that people at the higher end are going to be consuming at higher rates, that trickles down in New York,” she said. “Waiters, people who sell cars, people in the service industry who service that clientele feel more comfortable [about spending].”

NY’s consumers don rose-tinted specs

February 04, 2011 Consumer confidence statewide rocketed up 10.9 points in January, the largest monthly spike in the 12 years that Siena Research Institute has tracked consumer sentiment. At 76.5 on Siena’s scale, the confidence rating is consumer’s highest since the summer of 2007 and above the national number for the first time in two years.
Siena pollsters cited the arrival of Andrew Cuomo in the governor’s office, as well as positive economic indicators, as likely reasons for consumers’ spike in optimism.
“January had a lot of good news: manufacturing was up, auto sales were up, and the stock market is up 80% from its lows,” said Douglas Lonnstrom, the institute’s founding director and a professor of statistics and finance at Siena College. “We had a good holiday season—the best retail season since 2007—and Cuomo’s message is ringing a bell. He’s talking about no taxes, and jobs, jobs, jobs.”
Consumers were surveyed throughout January using the same methodology that the University of Michigan uses to measure consumer confidence nationwide. New York’s largest monthly increase had been 6 points in 2004.
Despite the gain, New York’s consumer confidence level of 76.5 is still nearly 30 points lower than it was in 2000, at the height of the stock market bubble, and 15 points off its peak in early 2007, just before the housing market crashed.
Mr. Lonnstrom cautioned that consumer confidence can fall as suddenly it jumped. “When conditions change, consumers react very quickly,” he said. “If gas goes from $3 a gallon to $4, consumer confidence will plummet. If the stock market goes down, consumer confidence will go down.”
Turmoil in Egypt could trigger a rise in oil prices and affect consumer confidence in February, he noted. Gasoline prices were stable in January after having crept upward for several months, he said.
Sharyn O’Halloran, a professor of political economy at Columbia University, said Wall Street’s strength in January—notably robust bonuses for its employees—likely had a greater effect on consumers in New York than in the rest of the country because the economy here depends heavily on the financial sector.
“When you see that people at the higher end are going to be consuming at higher rates, that trickles down in New York,” she said. “Waiters, people who sell cars, people in the service industry who service that clientele feel more comfortable [about spending].”
She suggested that Mr. Cuomo’s inauguration did not play a major role, because it had been expected for months, but she allowed that New Yorkers “have a lot more faith in his leadership than in [former Gov. David] Paterson, who was a lame duck.” http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20110204/FREE/110209923