Shoppertraking the Retail Slowdown

Russ Winter has been reporting a wide range of indicators showing a slowdown in retail sales over on his blog. He's been watching the mainstream retail sales numbers as well as tax receipts and other obscure indicators.

It's a little hard to see through the the seasonal variations due to the earlier Easter this year. Nevertheless using a six-week moving average smoothes out Shoppertrak's data pretty well:

I've maintained for a good while that government and banking interests are geared toward prolonging the status quo, so it's the final exhaustion of the US consumer that will have to bring the global economy back into balance. For now, consumers don't seem to be willingly giving up their buying habits, so poverty is the face of the exausted US consumer: NY Times article on US poverty levels