Retail sales for September : -5% compared to August!

What the news said :

The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that advance estimates of U.S. retail and food services sales for September, adjusted for seasonal variation and holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes, were $395.5 billion, an increase of 1.1 percent (±0.5%) from the previous month and 7.9 percent (±0.7%) above September 2010. Total sales for the July through September 2011 period were up 8.0 percent (±0.7%) from the same period a year ago. The July to August 2011 percent change was revised from virtually unchanged (±0.5%)* to +0.3 percent (±0.2%).

Notice the ``adjusted for seasonal variation`` aka cooking up the numbers. Not to mention it says ``but not for price changes``... aka inflation is NOT factored in.

Reality :

Retail & food services total :
September 2011 : 382 009 -4.97%
August 2011 : 401 951 +2.57%
July 2011 : 391 878 +11.4%
September 2010 : 351 696 -4.75%
August 2010 : 369 199

If you look at the numbers, everything is down. And that is not counting the fact that inflation is not factored in. So if sales are -5% and inflation is 5%, you really are looking at a -10% sale figure in terms of units sold.

Or if you look at +5% sales and inflation is really +5%, you have no increase in real sales...

Government LOVES to manipulate the data to prop up the stock market.

reply to post by Vitchilo


Make no mistake, they were totally aware that the numbers they reported were wrong. It's Friday, and the DOW was on it's biggest positive run in weeks, so they couldn't do anything to hinder that. They will just release the revised numbers in a little excerpt in the back of some financial section in tiny hardly readable text.

reply to post by Vitchilo


Nice catch & good work!

Maybe they just believe the old adage: "What you don't know can't hurt you!"

Have you noticed the other way they keep pulling the wool over people's eyes: "...could lead to a recession..."

— It leaves the unsuspecting believing we couldn't possibly already be in one.

It also stops people even wondering whether a depression could be imminent.

Well isn't it funny that the MSM released this into the press today then:

Why the Economy Looks like Expansion...

There's a great mismatch between the way people feel about the economy and many of the underlying trends. The sentiment says recession, but much of the underlying data suggest growth.

Looks like we just caught them lying outright.

Everything's ok!! The jobless actually have jobs, they just don't know it.

what gets me is "seasonally ajusted" was just for the winter time. Now they use it for every month of the year.

This type of data is to be expected, Bernanke's been printing money like crazy, so a Fed manipulated recovery and boom is well on its way. But unlike central banking caused booms and distortions of the recent past, this one will come with much higher price inflation.