Retail sales take sharpest plunge in nearly 2 years

Source: Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Consumers put away their wallets in June, sending retail sales crashing by the sharpest amount in nearly two years.

The Commerce Department reported Friday that retail sales fell by 0.9 percent last month, the biggest drop since August 2005. Demand for autos, furniture and building supplies all plunged.

The drop was much bigger than the flat reading that economists had been expecting. It raised new worries about consumer spending, which is closely watched because it accounts for two-thirds of total economic activity.

... Economists said the weaker-than-expected retail sales report called into question Thursday's big stock market surge, suggesting that investors were overly enthusiastic about an earlier report on sales by the nation's largest retail chains.

Read more: http://www.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_6366993?nclick_check=1

Two consecutive pieces on NPR's hourly headlines indicated that sales are up more than expected and that sales are down more than expected.

:wtf:

Up is down.

No wonder I'm confused.

--p!

This is in the same month consumer debt shot up sharply and home loans plunged. What was all that debt for?

My theory is that a lot of people are using consumer credit to float sub-prime and variable rate morgtage payments at the moment ahead of a wave of foreclosure.

The last ditch effort to Master Card a house is a very small portion of this mess. Even the stupidest people out there aren't going to charge a payment on a 5% loan to a 20% card. Well, maybe the very stupidest.

What's driving the increase in the consumer debt load is the increase in daily living costs, from gasoline to veggies. Everything we need to live on is skyrocketing.

The only thing not going up is the average person's paycheck.

I'm certainly rethinking my need for new summer shorts if I have to pay $50 to fill the tank on my way to the mall....

:wtf:

Dow, S&P reach record on strength of retail sales reports
By Eric Martin Bloomberg NewsPublished: July 13, 2007


NEW YORK: U.S. stocks rallied Thursday, sending the Dow Jones industrials average and the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index to records, as retailers reported better-than-expected sales and investors speculated that Alcoa was about to be sold.

"The general feeling today is that we had surprisingly good reports on retail sales and the big daddy of them all, Wal-Mart, beat estimates," said John Wilson, co-director of equity strategy at Morgan Keegan in Memphis, Tennessee. "Things look very positive."

<snip>

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/07/12/business/bxus.php

You can't believe a damn thing you hear and read. Last few days it has become even more absurd and I have turned on the CD's to forget how stupidity surrounds us. There is not a darn thing we can do but get a huge turnover in the next election.

I manufacture and sell directly to retailers, and they've been complaining all summer about slow sales.

They had their wallets out paying higher grocery bills, higher gas prices, higher rents, higher utilities and then-- surprise--

they couldn't afford that new sofa.

right now

The media was pumping the EXACT opposite of fact yesterday.

Retail sales are up because basic shit costs more because of energy costs and because capitalism once consolidation happens becomes a race to the highest price the market will bear while quality is destroyed in pursuit of ever-shrinking margins.

So, spending power is going down, even while sales are up. People are spending more for the same, and gas prices are destroying disposable income figures.

The US economy is in deep trouble. Personal debt is too high, and foreclosures are about to go bananas, especially in the South and East Coast, where insurance costs are skyrocketing, adding more pressure to the housing crisis.

The super-rich are doing better than ever, as is the design by Bushco. Everyone else is MUCH worse off than they were eight years ago.

They not only quit spending retail, they quit taking the cat to the vet.