POLL: Consumer Confidence Tanks in Sharpest Drop in 20 Years

The consumer confidence decline is blamed on the stock market fall, gasoline prices and the Iraq war.

Consumer confidence sustained its steepest one-week drop in more than 20 years of ongoing polls this week, falling to its lowest level since the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in late October 2005.

The ABC News/Washington Post Consumer Comfort Index lost an extraordinary nine points to -20 on its scale of +100 to -100, down from -11 last week, and a summertime high of -5 four weeks ago. Before now, the index never has fallen by more than seven points in a single week in 1,130 weeks of consecutive polling.

The decline is broadly based among population groups, and there seems not to be a single negative event to blame, but a confluence: the stock market's fall, troubled housing and credit markets, the Fed's expressions of concern about an economic downturn, the cumulative effect of high gasoline prices during the summer driving months, and a public broadly dispirited over the course of national events, driven by the unpopular war in Iraq.

Stay the course!

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