Retail Sales increased 0.6% for December 2010 and is up 7.9% this time a year ago. Retail sales increased 6.6% in comparison to all of 2009. Sales have recovered to pre-recession levels. The three month average of December, November, October 2010 has an increase of 7.8% in comparison to a year ago. November retail sales percentage change was 0.8%.
The Consumer Price Index for December 2010 increased 0.5% from last month. For the year, the Consumer Price Index for all Urban Consumers (CPI-U) has risen 1.5%. Gas alone increased 8.5% from November. Core CPI, or all items less food and energy, also increased, 0.1%, the same increase as last month. For the year, core CPI, or minus food and energy, is off it's record lows, now at 0.8%.
SIGTARP released a new audit report, Extraordinary Financial Assistance Provided to Citigroup which should shock and awe.
Citigroup was bailed out in November 2008, with $20 billion dollars plus $301 billion in asset guarantees. Now the Special Inspector General of TARP has gone back and done an audit, a forensic accounting of what really happened.
It appears Citigroup poses systemic risk was just screamed from the roof tops like Chicken Little and the solution was to throw money at it. No one bothered to check if this was even true, that Citigroup presented a systemic collapse of the global financial system if it failed. Even worse, while systemic risk is so complex, kind of a domino theory of multi-dimensions, yet to ascertain the possibility, it was implied why bother? From the report:
First, the conclusion of the various Government actors that Citigroup had to be saved was strikingly ad hoc. While there was consensus that Citigroup was too systemically significant to be allowed to fail, that consensus appeared to be based as much on gut instinct and fear of the unknown as on objective criteria. Given the urgent nature of the crisis surrounding Citigroup, the ad hoc character of the systemic risk determination is not surprising, and SIGTARP found no evidence that the determination was incorrect.
The November 2010 U.S. trade deficit decreased $0.1 billion to $38.3 billion. October's trade deficit was revised to $38.4 billion. Exports increased $1.2 billion and imports increased $1.1 billion. That's only a 0.7% increase in exports from last month, so in a nutshell, the trade deficit didn't budge much from October.
Initial weekly unemployment claims increased to 445,000 this week. Remember when on December 30th, Initial Jobless Claims dropped below 400,000? Looks like it was a fluke, an anomaly, as originally thought. Initial weekly unemployment claims is a volatile number, subject to revisions.
Just when you are lulled into sleep, thinking the financial crisis is over, here comes the World Bank with different ideas. While they start with how the world has economically recovered and all is well, later in the report are some not so swell numbers for the U.S. as well as warnings that the Globe could return to the financial crisis of 2008. Below is the World Bank's latest GDP growth projections for 2011 and 2012.
JOLTS stands for Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey. The November report shows there were 4.63 official unemployed people hunting for a job to every position available. If one takes the official broader definition of unemployment, or U6, the ratio becomes even worse, 8.17.
It's Friday Night! Party Time! Time to relax, put your feet up on the couch, lay back, and watch some detailed videos on economic policy!
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