consumer spending

GDP, Q4 2012 Preliminary

By |2013-01-31T17:06:15-05:00January 31st, 2013|Markets|

Government spending and inventory builds were good in Q3, according to economists, when they pushed GDP accounting above expectations. Those same two economic accounts dramatically reduced economic activity in Q4, so economists are now intimating that the resulting contraction is something other than real. On the part of government spending, it probably should be ignored and certainly GDP is a [...]

What Is The Trend In Retail Sales

By |2012-11-14T17:09:51-05:00November 14th, 2012|Markets|

Seasonal adjustments or unadulterated data? Imputations and trend-cycle analysis or extrapolating trends from raw data? After beating consensus estimates for two months in August and September, seasonally-adjusted retail sales came back down to earth in October. One of the primary drags on growth was a rather large decline in automobile sales – a topic we have covered extensively in our [...]

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