Toll Brothers's Joel Rassman

So where is confidence today?
We're at a time when there isn't a lot. You look at [George W.] Bush's ratings and you don't get the feeling that the country is inspired. Whether he can turn that around or not, I don't know. I think when people thought after 2001 that he was doing a great job, they were buoyed. And now that they question the job he's doing — not me, this is not a political statement of mine — but if you look at the polls, you're looking at more gloom and doom. I just think there is a relationship.

Bush's Economic Toll?

Toll Brothers regional president Barry DePew wrote his master's in finance thesis on the correlation between presidential job ratings and consumer confidence, which CFO Joel Rassman cites in his interview with CFO, as the fundamental cause of the downturn in housing. While DePew couldn't supply a copy of his thesis because his professor never gave it back, the work won him a degree from Drexel University in 1983. And DePew recalls that his research found a correlation going back at least far as the aftermath of the civil war, and that presidential job approval ratings were even more of a leading economic indicator than consumer confidence.

"When confidence is low in the president," DePew adds, "things have never been good."

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