by Wolf Richter
Wolf Street
Powered by price increases.
Total retail sales – not adjusted for inflation, now a big factor – inched up 0.7% in August from July, to $619 billion (seasonally adjusted), up a stunning 18% from two years ago and 15.1% from a year ago. The insert in the chart shows that this wasn’t a proper “rebound,” as it has been widely called in the media today, but an uptick in a four-month down-trend from the mind-blowing superlative historic free-money blow-off spike in April. August retail sales were down 1.6% from that April stimmie-craziness: