Consumer Gloom and Doom: real or imagined?

The U.S. Commerce Department released surprisingly positive consumer spending, personal income and personal savings figures today. Personal income went up a seasonally adjusted 1.9% during May compared to April (analysts had expected only a 0.4% gain). Personal spending zoomed up 0.8% in May versus April. Adjusted for inflation, spending was 0.4% - highest since December 2006. Therefore, the increase in spending can't be due to inflation alone. People are confident enough to spent more money on real terms than they did a month or two ago.

But did consumers spend money they didn't have? Clearly not:

• disposable personal income (i.e., after taxes) increased by 5.7% in May after rising 4% in April
  

• personal savings as a percentage of disposable income zoomed up to 5% - the largest figure since March 1995 (also 5%).

How can we reconcile Wednesday's historically low consumer confidence figures with today's release of consumer financial information? The former constitutes what consumers are saying and thinking while the latter shows us what they did.