Free Republic

It's a holiday miracle: give the worst creditors access to cheap money for longer-and-longer terms and hey presto, 'expensive' stuff is available to everyone. Retail sales modestly beat expectations in November (+0.7% vs +0.6% expectations) despite the NRF previously reporting the worst extended Thanksgiving shopping weekend since Lehman which surely got lost in the Arima-X-12 seasonal adjustments - sending USDJPY spiking to confirm what great news this is. What was the great news? A 0.1% beat of the key ex-autos and gas category, which increased 0.6% in November, vs Expectations of 0.5%, and a decline from the upward revised 0.7%...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Retail sales posted a modest gain in August, helped by the biggest jump in auto sales in more than a year. But there are concerns that spending could falter as the steep slump in housing and financial market turbulence weigh on consumer confidence. The Commerce Department reported Friday that retail sales increased 0.3 percent in August, compared to July, when sales had been up by 0.5 percent. The strength last month was led by a 2.8 percent jump in auto sales, the biggest increase since July 2006. The increase in retail sales was just about half what...

Lemon Harangue BY DAVE BARRY (This classic Dave Barry column was originally published on Jan. 21, 1990.) TODAY'S CONSUMER TOPIC IS: How to Buy a Car. The First Rule of Car-Buying is one that I learned long ago from my father, namely: Never buy any car that my father would buy. He had an unerring instinct for picking out absurd cars, cars that were clearly intended as industrial pranks, cars built by workers who had to be blindfolded to prevent them from laughing so hard at the product that they accidentally shot rivets into each other. For example, my father...