Retail sales are down, they are not off a cliff. Here is what they say for November:
The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that advance estimates of U.S. retail and food services sales for November, adjusted for seasonal variation and holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes, were $355.7 billion, a decrease of 1.8 percent (±0.5%) from the previous month and 7.4 percent (±0.7%) below November 2007. Total sales for the September through November 2008 period were down 4.5 percent (±0.5%) from the same period a year ago. The September to October 2008 percent change was revised from -2.8 percent (±0.5%) to -2.9 percent (±0.2%).
Retail trade sales were down 2.0 percent (±0.5%) from October 2008 and were 8.5 percent (±0.7%) below last year. Motor vehicle and parts dealers sales were down 25.2 percent (±2.3%) from November 2007 and gasoline stations sales were down 22.0 percent (±1.7%) from last year.
Motor vehicle sales are depressed, I’ll grant you that. Gasoline sales are down because the price of gas is down—hardly a negative. The rest of the retail sales report is consistent with a typical recession. In fact, motor vehicle sales are also consistent with a typical recession. When I lived in Detroit, they used to say that when the US economy sneezes, Detroit gets triple pneumonia.
You did catch the -8.5% YoY in this post which is photoguy bad..and that was in October. It has gotten much worse the last 2 months. We can go round and round on this forever. Let’s check back in a year and we’ll see if things are improving or getting worse and how much GDP we’ve dropped. My bet is -7-10% from the end of Q3 2008 and with the Option Arm/Alt A reset coming at the end of this year and 2010 we MAY bottom in the middle of 2010. This will not be a V shaped recession. L shaped at best, depression becoming highly likely.