We all know the story of how the Grinch stole Christmas, but that wasn't good enough. Now Grinch retailers are stealing Thanksgiving too. The holiday is now officially co-opted so folk can stand in line at stores, out in the cold, all in hopes of saving $100 on some big screen TV.
Third quarter 2014 real GDP was revised upward to 3.9% from the original 3.5%. The reason was investment, as changes in private inventories were revised sharply upward. Consumer spending was also stronger by over a quarter of a percentage point and also bumped up the revision. Imports were revised upward and exports downward which subtracted from economic growth. Overall Q3 GDP was surprisingly strong in this Turkey surprise.
The October state employment statistics shows the unemployment rate has evened out and become more similar across states. The national unemployment rate was 5.8% and 22 states show similar unemployment rates, 12 plus the D.C. area were above the national average and 16 were below.
In the 2014 elections, the Democrats' only "Hail Mary" hope in Hell had been, not just keeping the Senate, but winning back the House as well. Now (maybe for an entire generation) the Democrats have lost almost any chance at all of getting back any meaningful political power in Washington for a very long time to come — because their messaging during the 2014 elections was such an utter and dismal failure.
The Advance Retail Sales Report for October (pdf) from the Census Bureau estimated that our total seasonally adjusted retail and food services sales were at $444.5 billion in October, which was an increase of 0.3% (±0.5%)* from the revised September sales of $443.0 billion, and 4.1% (±0.9%) above sales in October of last year.. Recall that the asterisk on October’s sales indicates that from their small sampling of retail outlets, Censu
The Federal Reserve Industrial Production & Capacity Utilization report shows a -1.0% decline in industrial production for October and September was revised down to 0.8% growth. Manufacturing alone grew by 0.2%, but utilities dropped by -0.7% after last month's large gain. Mining also decreased by almost a percentage point, -0.9%.
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