After some stabilization into mid-2015, the ratio of business inventories-to-sales has surged as sales have disappointed and mal-investment-driven dreams have over-stocked. Business inventories rose 0.1% MoM in December (retail up 0.4%) and sales tumbled 0.6%.
Year-over-year, Inventories are now up 1.7% (led by retailers up 5.4%) while Sales are down 2.4% (led by Manufacturers down 5.1%)
Recession?
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Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,
What NIRP communicates is: this sucker's going down, so sell everything and hoard your cash and precious metals.
The last hurrah of central banks is the negative interest rate policy--NIRP. The basic idea of NIRP is to punish savers so severely that households and businesses will be compelled to go blow whatever money they have on something--what the money is squandered on is of no importance to central banks.
There was hardly a blemish in today's retail sales report: the January numbers not only beat expectations across the board, including the all important control group which printed at 0.6% or the highest since May, but the December data was also revised notably higher. At first glance, great news for those who hope consumer spending is finally getting some traction from collapsing gasoline prices.
And yet, even a modestly deeper look below the strong retail sales headline numbers once again reveals just how this "across the board beat" was accomplished.
There was much at stake in today's retail sales report, because had the Census reported another miss in the headline, ex auto and control group data, it would have made the Fed's job of maintain the illusion of a recovery into a rate hike cycle virtually impossible. Luckily for Yellen, the numbers came out and they were were beats across the board.