Prior was 89.4This is a terrible reading and reflects an increasingly dark mood regarding inflation and energy prices. It's a sharp drop through the Liberation Day and pandemic lows near 85. There is some real divergence in economic data in the last week as the S&P Global services PMI was very strong last week and this is very weak. I tend to think of the sentiment surveys now as more political but there are still knock-on effects for spending.For background, The Conference Board's Consumer Confidence Index is one of the two big monthly reads on US household mood, and it tends to lean more on jobs than its University of Michigan cousin. The survey asks five questions: views on current business conditions and current employment (these make up the Present Situation Index), plus expectations for business conditions, jobs and income six months out (the Expectations Index). The headline is indexed to 1985=100. Since 2021 the sample has been collected online by Toluna, with a preliminary cutoff around mid-month and release at 10 am ET on the last Tuesday.Two internals matter more than the headline. The first is the labour differential, the share saying jobs are "plentiful" minus those saying they're "hard to get." It tracks the unemployment rate closely and gets a lot of attention from economists as a real-time jobs signal. The second is the Expectations Index. The Conference Board has long flagged a reading below 80 as a recession warning.That's the problem right now. In August the headline slipped 0.8 points to 89.4, the second straight decline, and missed the 90.3 consensus. But the split was dramatic: Present Situation jumped 6.8 points to 121.2 while Expectations fell 5.8 points to 68.2, deep in warning territory. Consumers were more upbeat on today's labour market but gloomier on future jobs, income and business conditions, with the Iran-driven energy shock and $4 gasoline still weighing.Caveat: sentiment has been a poor predictor of spending in recent years. September's reading lands this morning, with consensus at 90.0. This article was written by Adam Button at investinglive.com.