I Thought It Was The Weather

Remember when the boneheads and bimbos on CNBC assured us that retail sales sucked in December, January, and February because it was cold and snowy? Ivy League trained economists shilling for Wall Street and the Federal government pompously declared that once Spring arrived consumers would unleash a torrent of spending with money they don’t have. Well Spring has sprung and the average American who has lower real household income than they did in 1999 is stuck paying higher taxes, higher food prices, higher energy prices and massively higher insurance premiums for free Obamacare. Or maybe the mild temperatures and sunny skies discouraged people from spending.

Discretionary, non-auto related, spending collapsed in April after being weak for the prior four months. That tremendous housing recovery is really doing wonders for furniture and electronics sales. Get ready to see more Space Available signs in front of vacant Best Buys and Ashley Furniture stores. The 3.4% surge in gasoline prices during April did wonders for gasoline sales. At least we have that going for us. Senior citizens must have stocked up on cat food in April since the price of beef and pork prohibits them from eating real food.

Motor vehicle sales continued to do fabulously as government owned Ally Financial and the Too Big To Trust Wall Street shysters doled out 7 year 0% subprime auto loans to deadbeats. It’s amazing how well you can juice sales by giving away your product, with no concern about being paid. A fiat money system is wonderful. Ask a banker. Drugstore sales did great, as free Obamacare distributes your tax dollars into the pockets of the Free Shit Army. I wonder how much of the hundreds of billions in government issued student loans is actually being spent at GameStop, Paneras, and Dick’s. It is Spring, and the 92 million non-working Americans need to work on their golf games.

The most shocking data is that on-line retail sales are FALLING. Keep buying that Amazon stock. That drone delivery will surely boost sales. Now that sales taxes are charged on most on-line transactions, this has destroyed much of their competitive advantage. The government drones have succeeded in siphoning off more money from the pockets of Americans, without benefiting the bricks and mortar dying retailers.

The control group, which excludes debt financed auto sales, food, gasoline and building materials was actually negative in April. This feeds the GDP calculation.

And lastly, remember these figures are BEFORE inflation is taken into account. Even using the fake government inflation figures, we have NEGATIVE real retail sales in the month where the “experts” assured us we would see a surge in spending. The country is in recession and the stock market is hitting new all-time highs. Guess who is winning?