Kriss has written (here and here) that the next state revenue forecast will likely come in below the November numbers, adding to the budget woes that will dominate the closing weeks of the legislative session. As has been the case through much of this frustrating semi-recovery, expectations continue to be mixed.

Economist Mark Perry has good news and bad. Consumer spending, critical to sustained growth, has been higher than pre-recession levels for the last three months. That’s the good. But the bad is reinforced in four simple charts demonstrating the sluggish job market.

Meanwhile, trust in government remains low, according to polling by the Pew Research Center, with unsurprising policy implications.

Currently, Americans say by a 56 to 35% margin that they prefer a smaller government providing fewer services than a bigger one…

And,

In nearly every political values survey since 1987, majorities have agreed that “government regulation of business usually does more harm than good.”

Trust in government also affects relations between levels of government. The Tax Policy Center looks at “Build America Bonds, the Medicaid Expansion, and Trust Between the States and the Feds.” Read the short piece. Its conclusion: Caveat emptor.

In the New York Times, economist Robert Schiller scans the landscape – a bullish stock market, health housing market, falling unemployment rates – and reports,

These vital signs make many people believe that we’ve turned the corner on the economy, that we’ve started a healing process. And their discussions often note one particular sign of systemic recovery: confidence. There is considerable hope that the markets are heralding a major development: that Americans have lost the fears and foreboding that have made the financial crisis of 2008 so enduring in its effects.

Hope is a wonderful thing. But we also need to remember that changes in the stock market, the housing market and the overall economy have relatively little to do with one another over years or decades.

Besides that, he notes, “confidence can change awfully fast.”

Something to keep in mind as we approach another attempt to forecast state revenues.