Pent-up Consumer Demand Is Unleashed - Retail Sales Register Highest Yearly Increase in Four Years
WSJ -- "U.S. retail sales surged in March, topping expectations and giving a strong sign consumers are growing more confident the economy is improving. Retail sales leaped by 1.6% last month, the Commerce Department said today. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires had forecast a 1.3% increase. The gain was the biggest in four months.
Robust car sales drove much of the better-than-expected increase in retail sales. Yet excluding the automotive sector, other retailers were strong as well. Clothing stores, for instance, saw sales jump by 2.3%. The report Wednesday was another suggestion that a pent-up demand from the recession is being unleashed within the recovering U.S. economy."
Robust car sales drove much of the better-than-expected increase in retail sales. Yet excluding the automotive sector, other retailers were strong as well. Clothing stores, for instance, saw sales jump by 2.3%. The report Wednesday was another suggestion that a pent-up demand from the recession is being unleashed within the recovering U.S. economy."
MP: On a year-to-year basis, retail sales increased 7.6% in March, the highest annual gain since January 2006, more than four years ago.
6 Comments:
There's inflation in the pipeline. The productivity boom won't last, and demand for gold increased at the expense of the Dollar (the world's reserve currency, while the Euro had a setback, because of Greece and other weak E.U. economies):
How Inflation Begins
April 12, 2010
Jeffrey Saut
“I am a large volume importer of industrial hardware, mostly out of Asia. I just received my April ocean freight rate update. Container cost up 5% from March and up 21% from April 2009.
Business is still terribly slow but inventories have been depleted to the point that shortages are occurring. These shortages are exasperated by the fact that no one is buying any significant volume of replacement inventory. Our statistics would show that our purchases in March (for delivery this summer) are up about 400% from any given month last year BUT are still only about 30% of our peak going back before all hell broke loose. Can you imagine how this data can be spun by focusing on the former and conveniently ignoring the latter?
We feel that we have hit bottom and have reasonable expectations to survive this debacle simply because we have downsized to about 20-25% the company we once were. Our domestic competitors and vendors overseas basically report the same. ... (The) bottom line is this: no one is (all that) busy but prices are literally skyrocketing. Smells like stagflation to me. Anyone who tells me that there is no inflation on the horizon is delusional and in for one hell of a shock.”
Why are we so sure inflation will return? It is because for decades that has been the easiest political solution for the debt accumulation of our citizenry and our government. To wit, pay back the debt with “cheaper” dollars. Given the recent geometric rise of debt...we have suggested that a 10% per year inflation rate, for the next five years, would go a long way in solving the nation’s debt problems.
7.9 million homeowners (10.2% of those with mortgages) arent making house payments so they can buy trinkets from china...thats good?
This is first real bit of information for me that shows a possible recovery. However, we are still going against absolutely atrocious comps from 2009.
With all the signs pointing every direction, welcome to the "muddle-through" lost 2 decades.
Japan 2.0.
James
Well that WSJ article reminds me this: Economic Reporting: Then and Now
What "rjs" said.
Mortgage Defaults Drive Consumer Spending: Experts Weigh In
This makes sense, its tax time, most lower-middle class American's will be getting refunds this year. The pent-up consumer demand is unleashed because Americans are running to the malls to buy the things they couldn't and cannot afford!
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