There’s a lot of economic data being bandied about these days, much of which induces breathless reporting from media pundits and foreseers of doom.  Much of the data is taken out of context or historical perspective, and should be viewed with caution and even a bit of skepticism as to its relative weight. 

There is a piece of data out today that has gotten our attention though – the Census Bureau released data today on October retail sales.  You can read the details here. 

We agree with the folks at CalculatedRisk that retail sales are a critical part of PCE (which makes up over 70% of GDP).  They did an interesting thing today – they calculated the real change in retail sales using the monthly PCE index from the BEA – the graph tells the story quite well……..


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