by Wolf Richter
Wolf Street
Government gives consumers Free Money, retail sales spike. Free Money peters out, retail sales sag. Welcome to the new normal.
The $1,400 stimmies that started flowing in March were still flowing voluminously in April, and the last big waves are still flowing in May, and then they’ll peter out. For retailers, this petering out will be a moment of truth. But in April, those stimmies kept coming and kept getting spent.
Retail sales in April maintained the peak of the epic WTF spike of March, as Americans spent the same epic record pile of money of $620 billion (seasonally adjusted) at their favorite brick & mortar retailers, online, and at restaurants and bars, the Census Bureau reported today.