The Commerce Department is still shut down, so today's scheduled release of the Personal Income and Spending report for October has been delayed. There were, however, a couple reports indicative of consumer spending during the pre-Christmas shopping season.

In the week before Christmas, all through the malls, retailers were hoping that a last-minute surge in consumer spending would bring seasonal sales back up to the level of last year. Indeed, there was a last-minute surge of buying; but, it wasn't enough to overcome the slow sales of the preceding weeks.

Today, Telecheck, the country's largest check acceptance company, reported that same-store sales for the entire holiday shopping season were down 3.8% from the same period a year ago. This is up significantly from the sales shortfall of 6.2% reported at the end of the preceding week.

In other news, the Johnson Redbook Survey reported that seasonally-adjusted retail sales for the four-week period ending last Friday were down 2.4% from the same period last month.

Byline: Lafferty (MF Merlin)