by Wolf Richter
Wolf Street
“Lapse” in stimulus payments, bad weather blamed for retail sales decline, as inflation on durable goods hits 3.3%. Counting on next round of free money!
Here is the thing: Retail sales in February dropped 3.0% from January to $562 billion, seasonally adjusted, according to the Census Bureau this morning, much lower than “expected.” What gets blamed for the discrepancy? The weather, which in February was nasty in much of the country. But if these economists had looked at anything at all in February, they would have known that a big part of the country had frozen up, with massive rolling blackouts in Texas and elsewhere, for days in a row.