So remember last month when the Administration's economists and cheerleaders were certain that, due to all those child tax credit checks arriving just in time for back-to-school shopping, August retail sales would be booming? Well, once again, their rosy predictions fell short:
Retail sales rose just 0.6 in August when analysts had looked for a jump of 1.4 percent, while July's result was revised down slightly to 1.3 percent.Strangely, sales ex-autos were up 0.7 percent implying autos detracted from overall sales even when manufacturer's figures on domestic unit sales had shown a huge rise in August.
PPI came out today as well. According to the same Reuters' article:
Producer price figures for August showed a slightly higher than expected rise of 0.4 percent overall but the more important core measure excluding food and energy edged up just 0.1 percent.
This always cracks me up: Everyone is effected by rising food and energy costs, in fact, consumers feel rising prices immediately in their pocketbooks. But economists always downplay overall price increases, focusing instead on the impact of "core" PPI/CPI. Has anyone in the Administration taken the time to speculate that maybe that .4% jump in food and energy prices may have had a depressing effect on those retail sales? Just wondering...
Posted by MB Williams at September 12, 2003 09:10 AM
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