U.S. households boosted retail spending by 1.2% in July. These sales are above pre-pandemic levels. It’s a sign the economy is still healing from the recession despite a rise in virus infections.
That’s great news!
Retail sales—covering spending at service stations, restaurants, stores, and online—rose for the third straight month, the Commerce Department reported Friday. Sales grew 8.4% in June after a double-digit percentage rise in May. Consumers boosted spending on electronics and appliances, health products, and restaurant meals, the Wall Street Journal reports.
The number applying for unemployment went under a million this week.
THE ECONOMY IS SHRINKING
You should also know that the media is lying by omission to you about the shrinking of the economy.
U.S. gross domestic product shrank by 9.5% between April and June, easily representing the largest quarterly drop on record. The second-quarter annualized rate came out to a 32.9% drop, also the worst performance on record.
These are very special circumstances and they should be temporary.
The annualized rate is a projection, in this case reflecting that if the American economy experienced a full financial calendar like the last few months, GDP would drop by about 32.9%. While normally the annualized rate is a useful metric for measuring the economy, the BEA is not emphasizing that eye-popping drop in GDP because it’s very uncertain whether the U.S. will experience another quarter so devastating.
Most of the media only reported the economy shrank by 32.9%, which is terrifying.
In other words, most of the media want you to think the economy shrank by 32.9%. That is an annualized rate when it was only one quarter. Hopefully, it will continue to approve. That is not to say 9.5% is great, but it’s not 32.9% at this point. We would need three more quarters of this to hit 32.9% and that is unlikely.
Stocks are doing fine with the Dow at almost 28K:
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