“It’s goin’ down, I’m yellin’ timber!”

Who remembers that song? If your hand’s not raised, do yourself a favor and don’t look it up. It’s pretty bad.

But not as bad as consumer confidence in America, which collapsed by the most since “Liberation Day” this month, according to Tuesday’s update from the Conference Board.

The headline, a truly disheartening 81.9, not only missed the lowest estimate, but in fact counted as the worst read in a dozen years.

The figure above gives you some context: September’s read on America’s second-most important mood gauge (the preeminent release being the University of Michigan survey) was worse even than April and May of 2020, when the economy was shuttered for COVID.

The decline for September was the third in a row and the fourth in five. As the chart header suggests, this month’s drop felt like a levee break moment.

Both of the component gauges were terrible, with the present situation index hitting a new post-2021 low and the expectations index diving to 63.6, among the worst readouts since the GFC and a hopeless 16ppt below the threshold which typically presages a recession.

The proximate cause of households’ consternation: Inflation, of course. “References to prices, the high cost of goods and services, and oil and gas prices in particular, rose to new heights,” Conference Board chief economist Dana Peterson remarked, in the editorial accompanying the release.

The figure above shows you the average of the Conference Board and Michigan sentiment headlines. It speaks for itself.

The labor differential — arguably the most important metric derived from the Conference Board release — fell to just 1.7, as the share who described jobs as “hard to get” reached 21.9%.

Bottom line: This was a horrible, horrible read on consumer psychology, which is either jarring or just par for Bedminster. However you want to look at it.