Economists vs. Americans

By Sudeep Reddy

The Financial Trust Index has been tracking public sentiment toward the financial system for more than three years. And sentiment isn’t good.

In the latest release today, the survey found that just 23% of Americans say they trust the U.S. financial system. That’s as low as the earliest months of the economic crisis. And 62% describe themselves as angry, or very angry, about the nation’s economic situation — the highest level since March 2009. (The index is a joint project of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management.)

For its latest quarterly survey, the Financial Trust Index took its responses from average Americans to a series of economic assertions and put them up against the responses from an expert panel of economists. The results are striking:

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