The Westpac - Melbourne Institute September survey of consumer sentiment was released showing a decline in the ratio of optimistic consumers to pessimistic consumers. A value below 100 indicates there are more pessimistic consumers than optimists and the September index dropped 5.6 points to 93.9 from the almost-neutral value of 99.5 registered in August. There was broad range of reasons which led to increased consumer pessimism with most of the...