Instapopulist

Real Retail Sales Increased ~.75% in October

There were two somewhat important economic reports for October released last week, coincidentally both rescheduled for release at 8:30 AM on Wednesday, retail sales from the commerce department and the consumer price index from the bureau of labor statistics (BLS)..  Together they're often used by economists to generate a metric that goes by 'real retail sales', which is supposed to be something analogous to the real personal consumption expenditures metric of GDP, and which is said to be an indica

True Confessions of a Quantitative Easing Kind

There is an amazing, astounding op-ed in the Wall Street Journal.  A Federal Reserve employee involved with the $1.25 trillion in mortgage backed securities purchased back in 2009 has confessed.  He spills the beans on how quantitative easing has made the super rich even richer while doing almost nothing for main street.  Here's an excerpt:

September CPI: Using the CPI and Retail Sales to preview PCE in GDP

Included below is a table taken from the retail sales report for September; notice that the 3 month change in sales from the 2nd quarter to the 3rd quarter is in the third column, and the change from the 3rd quarter from a year ago is in the 4th column. Now notice that seasonally adjusted sales for the July to September period are up 1.1% over the April to June period, and up 4.4% over the July to September period of a year earlier.

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