Right, but it's a bit deeper than that. Roughly 70% of our economic activity is us buying and selling crap between one another. That makes sense if you think about it. Even if you buy a widget from China, you generally bought it from a store in the US staffed by people in the US, so your buying the widget did result in some money going to China (if you leave time out of it), but it also resulted in a bit of money going to the employees of the store, whatever means you took to get to the store or get the widget from the store to your house, and so forth.

If people feel like the economy is bad, then it will be. If they believe it is strong, then it will be. If enough people decide to delay a purchase, we go into recession. This is a maddening situation for politicians, because there isn't much they can really do about boosting it...except give money to poor people. That will work. Giving money to the middle class won't do much, and giving money to the rich won't do a thing, but giving money to poor people will boost the economy. Not easy to do, though, and if people still feel sour about the economy, it might not even help much.