Two weeks ago, the headlines were all about how consumer confidence had surged in April. Today, it turns out that confidence be damned, consumers were actually buying less in April than in March, which was already a historically bad month for sales.

This is why so much economic coverage is crap — most of it is just parroting of the day’s press releases, with any analysis provided by too often self-interested “authorities.” Though it’s always possible the earlier headline writers just believed what they read in The Onion.