It’s funny how headlines for yesterday’s consumer confidence report left out a few critical words (appended above) about the exact nature of the rebound. The March reading for the Conference Board’s consumer confidence index made back about half of the February plunge that had taken this important gauge of the American mood back to the  level of last April, just after the worst of the financial market crisis. There’s more in this AP report.

Since so much of the U.S. economy is based on “confidence” – more specifically, both the ability and desire of Americans to spend freely when maybe they really shouldn’t – it’s hard to imagine how the pre-2008 mode of U.S. economic growth can be restored after what happened in 2008, yet, that seems to be what everyone wants.