The biggest thorn in the recovery narrative, or whatever it is that the FOMC claims is guiding its hand, is that consumers are not spending as they “should” under such circumstances. Retail sales not only have disappointed this year, bookended by “unexpected” weather on one and an as-yet excused position for the other, they are downright awful. That is confirmed [...]
The retail sales release for August was actually quite alarming. The track of sales pretty much confirms the end of the spring “bounce” that showed up in Gallup’s figures, but the real concern is that the “bounce” itself was never more than a minor adjustment; an absence of further erosion as it were. That is nothing like what is being [...]
Gallup’s daily spending tracking poll dipped slightly in August, but what matters most is that spending levels have been flat now going back more than a year. There is no insight provided as to why that has occurred, only that people at the bottom ends of the income spectrum are unwilling or, more likely, unable to increase their economic activity. [...]
Maybe using the word “troll” in this sense is overdoing it, but in more than one way it seems deserved given what has been presented. The retail picture so far at the beginning of the back-to-school season has been, at best, mixed. But you don’t get that idea from most of what is presented. As Thomson Reuters starts its latest [...]
To go alongside the “unexpected” turn in payrolls Friday, the National Retail Federation issued a statement that highlighted a somewhat contradictory assessment of the US economic picture. They had an easy time stating the facts, or at least what was estimated of US jobs in the retail industry: NRF calculated retail industry (excluding autos and gasoline) employment declined by 17,700 [...]
Economists and policymakers continue to count on a second quarter surge in economic activity to ignite momentum for the rest of the year. The first revision to Q2 GDP comes on Thursday, so that will be the first test of the thesis. Given the inordinate volatility in the data set GDP could conceivably amount to almost anything at this point. [...]
In addition to this morning’s “noisy” and suddenly more tame CPI report, there is a broad-based decline in commodity prices that is more than a little bit outside of “usual” volatility. It should be noted at the start that commodity prices are not always direct reflections of economic activity or expectations for future activity, as other factors intertwine and take [...]
With retail sales this week bringing an “unexpected” shock to those forecasting a robust economic rebound (outside of inventory, anyway) in the US, further confirmation has been offered pretty much everywhere else. WalMart’s quarterly report was as it has been since the end of 2012 with continuing slow erosion. US same store comparables were flat, which is something of an [...]
One more point on retail sales and consumer spending, as though the figures presented earlier are, I think, all pretty demonstrative of what is taking place in the economy, they can still be enhanced by taking account of additional factors. None of the data from retail sales or Gallup’s measures of economic advance are “deflated” or adjusted for changes in [...]
Case in point on corroborative evidence divorced from the government’s statistical adjustments, Gallup’s various surveys on the economy, focused almost exclusively on consumers, do not conform to the idea of strengthening resolve nor even more broad-based payroll expansion. The latest figures for July in the daily tracking of self-reported spending ticked up over June, but that observation, once again, is [...]
Stay In Touch