There's also buying things because of hopelessness and overwhelm.

There have been many times where I have just turned around and walked out of a grocery store without buying anything because the prices are so absurd that I guess I just don't need to buy food today.

And then, on the other hand, there are things that I have bought that I normally wouldn't justify spending money on, but it's hard to be thoughtful when it feels like the whole system is broken and the prices don't make sense on anything anymore anyway.

These choices are "consumer confidence" or "rational choices," or whatever the MBAs at Bank of America want to frame it as. For me at least, a lot of this is just truly a fundamental loss of faith in the system itself, and a sense of hopelessness that rational choices don't even really matter anymore.