BACK TO NORMAL?

We’ve set a new record for retail sales last month. The consumer is back baby!!! Considering household income is lower than it was in 2007 and there are still 5 million less people employed than in 2007, a critical thinking individual might wonder how retail sales could be setting new records. You can thank Helicopter Ben and the Obamanistas. Here is a link to the data:

http://www.census.gov/retail/marts/www/marts_current.pdf

Here are my observations:

• Unadjusted retail sales were up 10.3% over last year. This February had an extra day versus last year. If you remove that day, sales were up 6.5% on an apples to apples basis.
• Even though the MSM will always bring up bad weather to explain a bad number, they failed to credit any of the positive retail sales to the unbelievably great winter weather that has been in place for the entire winter across the country. That had to be worth an extra 1% to 2%.
• Adjusted retail sales were $25 billion higher than last year.
• Gasoline sales accounted for $4.4 billion of this increase, or 18% of the total.
• Restaurant sales accounted for $3.3 billion of this increase, an 8.2% increase over last year. The BLS numbers show food prices are up 10% in the last year, so inflation accounts for all of this increase.
• Food store sales were up $1.9 billion, only a 3.3% increase. When you consider food inflation is 10%, than people are actually buying less food than one year ago.
• Auto sales were up $4.7 billion over last year as the automakers are giving cars away to deadbeats with subprime loans for 7 years at 0% interest. Is that really a sale or a future taxpayer loss?
• Sales at general merchandise stores (aka Wal-Mart, Target) were only up $1.5 billion over last year, a miniscule 2.9% increase. With overall inflation running between 5% and 10%, this figure is terrible.

It is perfectly clear to me that the “strength” in retail sales is a sham. The increase is completely due to inflation and easy credit being dished out by Ben to the auto finance companies. The huge increase in non-revolving credit reflects the car loan scam going on. The new $35,000 cars parked in front of hovels in the slums of West Philly tells me all I need to know. The other boost to retail sales is coming from Obama and his entitlement society. The record amount of food stamps being doled out ends up in the retail sales number. The record number of deadbeats on Social Security Disability because they’re depressed is flowing into retail sales as depressed people need their smokes and malt liquor. The 99 weekers are spending their unemployment checks at retailers. So, retail sales are being supported by the country going $3.7 billion further in debt on a daily basis.

Does that sound sustainable? Reality is often much different than the spin.