Friday, November 16, 2012

Dwindling Retail Sales

The following chart shows the monthly growth in inflation adjusted retail sales.


Click to enlarge.

You can blame the trend line in red on the hurricane if you like, but blaming the overall slope of the blue trend line on the hurricane will be a lot more difficult.

In any event, the trends are not our friends. If they continue then it is only a matter of time before we're knee-deep in a recession again.

Source Data:
St. Louis Fed: Real Retail and Food Services Sales

6 comments:

Rob Dawg said...

Wait until Sears Holdings collapses and dumps 300 million square feet on the CRE market and starts a deflationary cycle that no monetary policy can affect.
And did I mention local sales tax and property tax impacts?

Troy said...

Not terribly apropos (as in "GYOFB!"), but I made a chart I liked:

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=cSG

Red is medicare outgo. Blue is medicare ingo.

So basically we need to return of Clinton tax rates on everyone to cover the difference.

We also need those tax rates on everyone to (mostly) cover the difference on DOD spending, 2012 to 2000, AND we need their return three times over to close the rest of the deficit.

For 'fun', let's add medicaid into the red line:

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=cSI

And, joy of joys, in 2014 PPACA is going to enroll tens of millions of low income people into medicaid:

6. How will the Medicaid expansion be financed?
The federal government will finance the great majority of the costs associated with the Medicaid expansion.

yeah, I get that.

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=cSM

is medicare+medicaid over wages, showing we need a 14% payroll tax to cover current program costs alone.

My general impression is that the DC is being as dishonest today as the Poltiburo was in Moscow was in the 1980s.

I think 2025 is when the wheels finally come off.

Fatboy said...

Retail sales adjusted for inflation and pop. growth

http://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/charts/indicators/Retail-Sales.html?Retail-Sales-four-views.gif

Stagflationary Mark said...

Rob Dawg,

And did I mention local sales tax and property tax impacts?

At some point the only bull market left will be in unmentionables.

Stagflationary Mark said...

Troy,

I think 2025 is when the wheels finally come off.

"Sounds like a blown transaxle. You're just grinding metal." - Hicks, Aliens

Stagflationary Mark said...

Fatboy,

That's a whole lotta nothin' since 2000.