Couldn't Have Said It Better

Mainstream forecasters have been predicting a return to "normal" ever since the crisis began, to no avail. Most recently, many in the rose-colored-glasses set have gotten all bulled up over the notion that the traditional seasonal jump in purchases of clothes, stationary supplies, computers, and other items before children returned to classes would confirm that the worst was over. Once again, as the The Market Ticker reveals in "Back To School? Where?" the facts prove the highly-paid prognosticators have no real clue about what is going on:

Uh, what back-to-school sales? [note: the data and commentary that follow comes from Econoday]

ICSC-Goldman Store Sales

Released on 9/1/2009 7:45:00 AM For wk8/29, 2009

Prior Actual Store Sales - W/W change 0.6 % -0.5 % Store Sales - Y/Y -0.2 % -0.7 %

Highlights
August chain-store sales ended up being a disappointment, according to ICSC-Goldman's same-store tally which fell 0.5 percent in the Aug. 29 week for a minus 0.7 percent year-on-year rate. The report down plays the impact of back-to-school calendar shifts and stresses the overall trend which it said is not improving. The report isn't making a call for month-to-month sales. Redbook is up next. 
 
Definition
This weekly measure of comparable store sales at major retail chains, published by the International Council of Shopping Centers, is related to the general merchandise portion of retail sales. It accounts for roughly 10 percent of total retail sales.  Why Investors Care 

That's nasty - one week before school starts in most of the country, and both weekly and year-over-year changes are deeply negative!

Note that the week/over/week change was expected to be strongly positive, which correlates well with the "back to school" surge.

No dice - that's a miss of 1.1%, enormous by any standard.

The reason is simple: The consumer is tapped out.

Those "green shoots" are in fact hallucinogenic weeds.

Comments

[roger]

The consumer, main engine of the economy? Crap and Bull!
The engine of production has come to a halt,this is the only source of wealth.
No new wealth produced= no gainful employment= no buying.The consumer can only
consume what he produced ,correction, he only gets a % of what he produces,a good % of what he produces is taking away from him for profit purpose, part of the profit goes into reinvestment for industrial growth and to day there is no
industrial expansion.But there is regression.

[LoisT]

Just a couple of observations. First, there seemed to be a lot of back-to-school activity in July. The stores were stocking backpacks, school supplies and cooler-weather clothes as they were clearing out their summer seasonal inventories. I noticed a lot of mothers and kids shopping together. I don't know if these sales in July would show up in back-to-school sales statistics. In contrast, when I took my kids clothes shopping two weeks ago, the stores were practically empty.

Second, a lot of times teachers will hand out supply lists on the first day of school, so we often don't know what we're supposed to buy until after school has already started. Finally, I learned the hard way that kids often don't even need the things that are put on the supply lists. Parents can develop a sixth sense as to what's really needed and what isn't.