Thread: Christmas Sales Horrible: Retail Sales Plunged

Wow! Incredibly bad news for Christmas sales. I wonder if it's possible for Obama and the liberal media to ignore this elephant in the living room.

December retail sales drop 0.3 percent - Yahoo! Finance

December retail sales drop 0.3 percent

Retail sales drop 0.3 percent in December as sales for all of 2009 plunge by record amount


Retail sales fell in December as demand for autos, clothing and appliances all slipped, a disappointing finish to a year in which sales had the largest drop on record.

The weakness in consumer demand highlighted the formidable hurdles facing the economy as it struggles to recover from the deepest recession in seven decades.


The Commerce Department said Thursday that retail sales declined 0.3 percent in December compared with November, much weaker than the 0.5 percent rise that economists had been expecting. Excluding autos, sales dropped by 0.2 percent, also weaker than the 0.3 percent rise analyst had forecast.


For the year, sales fell 6.2 percent, the biggest decline on records that go back to 1992. The only other year that annual sales fell was in 2008, when they slipped by 0.5 percent.


The 0.3 percent decline in December was the first setback since September, when sales had fallen 2 percent. Sales posted strong gains of 1.2 percent in October and 1.8 percent in November, raising hopes that the consumer is starting to mount a comeback.


Consumer spending is considered critical to any sustained economic revival since consumer spending accounts for 70 percent of total economic activity.

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I still have not seen any serious mention of this on any cable news shows.

I've heard countless baloney stories about the so-called "recovery" but no one wants to dwell on the facts about Christmas sales, which suggest there is no recovery.