How will you spend your Thanksgiving break?
New Yorkers have notorious reputations. They're rude neurotics who are always in a rush, they're bad drivers who honk without restraint — and now it seems they're also economic pessimists.
According to a monthly poll by the Siena Research Institute, while the rest of America is becoming more optimistic about the economic climate, New York consumer confidence has decreased by 0.5 points in September.
In the same time, the nation's overall confidence rose by 7.8 points.
Dr. Douglas Lonnstrom, founding director of SRI, said that because the major banks and companies that failed in the economic crash have headquarters in New York, the effects of the recession were felt immediately.
"Retirement plans were cut in half with the stock market decrease," Lonnstrom said. "Unemployment was huge. Now, even those who have jobs and money aren't spending like they were before. People got hurt."
While NYU professor and chair of the marketing department Russell Winer also attributed New York's pessimism to the decline of the financial market, he said that the fall of the media sector is to blame as well.
"In the media sector, the printing industry is having a lot of trouble," Winer said. "Newspapers are struggling; Conde Naste just closed four magazines. When people hear about all this in the news, it hurts the general consumer confidence."
The recession has caused CAS junior Courtney Sullivan to be more cautious in spending.
"This has helped me to realize that it is best to make do with what you need; wants can oftentimes be overlooked," Sullivan said.
Stern sophomore Brady Chiu, however, said that his spending habits have not been affected because he was brought up buying only necessities.
"There is at least one upside to a recession: I may actually be spending less because everything's on sale," Chiu said.
Winer thought of New Yorkers as fairly optimistic prior to the downturn.
"Personally I think that there will definitely be a rebound in the financial sector," he said. "It will take some time, but New York will return to its status as the financial capital of the world."
