MUNCIE, Ind. -- A well known fact in public opinion polling is often that people say what they think they are expected to say.

As a result, the most recent polls of U.S. consumer confidence in the national economy should be taken with a grain of salt, said Patrick Barkey, a Ball State University economic analyst.

Survey results for the last few months show consumer confidence has hit the skids, falling almost 15 percentage points over the last three months. Until the most recent bounce back in the stock market, there were plenty of highly publicized events in the world economy to rattle confidence.

"The vote of confidence consumers are giving with their wallets is something completely different, especially in October," said Barkey, director of the Bureau of Business Research. "After a late summer stall, the momentum of consumer spending is solidly upward, and signs of pickup in some struggling sectors of the economy are beginning to show up in the statistics on economic performance."

He points out that the most visible indicator of this turnaround is retail sales. Treading water since July, consumers opened their pocketbooks in October and began to buy again. The Bureau of the Census reports that total sales were up by a full 1.0 percent in October, and stand a very healthy 5.6 percent above the level of a year ago.

"What is even more heartening to those of us in the Midwest is the spending composition," Barkey said. "After a very strange third quarter that saw growth in spending on durable goods come to a standstill, it looks like big ticket items are moving off the showroom floors and store shelves once again."

Motor vehicle sales, in particular, have been torrid. Manufacturers reported that 1.374 million vehicles were sold in October, fully 10 percent higher than the number sold during the same month last year, he said.

Barkey said the other shining star continues to be the residential housing market. After cooling off to an annual rate just below 1.6 million units, residential housing starts shot back up strongly in October to a 1.695 million unit rate that fell just short of last summer's high.

There was also a vote of confidence of a different sort in the U.S. economy in the October statistics, coming from the nation's manufacturers, he said.

These rosy statistics are a gentle reminder of some fundamental realities of the U.S. economy of 1998, Barkey said.

"The slump of the economies of Asia, the default of Russia, and crises in places like Brazil have a clear, measurable impact on our economy, to be sure," he said. "But give consumers a pocketful of cash and put them in a spending mood, and it becomes a lot easier to overlook whatever obstacles the world may throw in our path."