Anthony Chan Retail Quotations

It confirms the belief that the weakness in retail sales was the result of a bunker mentality in the wake of the terrible events of Sept. 11.

I think a seasonal factor is part of the issue here, but you can't discount it all. Look at what is happening with chain store sales. They've been pretty weak. Some of it (weak retail employment) is real.

The outsized gain in housing starts was influenced by the same variable dominating most of the other headline stats like the retail sales and industrial production, namely weather. Everyone knows that housing starts is a volatile number that generally reports wide swings.

This gives the Fed license to continue executing monetary policy. If they see any signs of slow growth in employment, industrial production, or retail sales, they certainly have the green light to make another cut. They have total flexibility to do whatever it takes to prevent a recession.

This confidence is encouraging and takes some of the pressure off the terrible number we saw with retail sales.

The retail sales figures clearly prove that betting against the consumer is a sucker's bet. Not surprisingly, the ex-auto figure on retail sales tears down the argument that consumers are only buying cars and houses.

These numbers are essentially telling us that retail sales were artificially boosted by zero-percent financing. These numbers are not going to do anything to discourage the Fed from thinking that the balance of risk in the economy is toward weakness.