Thursday, December 3, 2009
Here’s a quick pair of articles that nicely illustrates the level of spin that we have to endure on a daily basis. As we are all aware, consumer spending is the largest driver of the US economy. By far.
Eyeballs everywhere are glued to this year’s holiday retail numbers, because if they are bad…well, then the stock market rally might be hard to sustain or explain.
It turns out that the November sales numbers came in far worse than expected:
Retailers report surprise drop in November
NEW YORK (AP) — The nation’s retailers suffered miserably through November as a modestly positive start to the holiday shopping season wasn’t strong enough to offset weak spending the rest of the month.
After posting two consecutive monthly sales gains after more than a year of declines, merchants collectively posted a surprise 0.3 percent decrease for November, compared with a year ago when business plummeted to historic lows as spooked shoppers clamped down after the financial meltdown. The sales decrease is an ominous sign for an economy in the early stages of a fragile recovery.
Now, the big worry is whether consumers won’t go back to the stores until the final hours before Dec. 25 as they wait for even bigger discounts in a season that many analysts had hoped would generate sales that would be unchanged from a year ago.
by blairhyatt