The Federal Reserve Board took a snow day today, so the November report on Consumer Installment Credit was not released as scheduled. We did, however, have a couple reports today on weekly retail sales results.

This morning Mitsubishi Bank/Shroeder-Wertheim reported that retail sales last week slumped by 2.6% versus a jump of 1.8% the preceding week. That giant sucking sound at the malls was created by the absence of all the physically and financially exhausted survivors of the pre- and post-Christmas sales.

This afternoon Johnson Redbook reported that retail sales last week were up 1.0% from the first week of December.

To the casual observer it may seem that the two reports are in conflict. One says that sales were down last week and the other says they were up. But, there's really no conflict because the two reports are comparing last week's results with different base periods. The Mitsubishi report is comparing last week's results with those of the preceding week and Johnson Redbook is comparing last week with the first week of December. You may recall, from the data presented in the 01/03/96 article, that consumers were lying low back around the first week of December, waiting for the last-minute, pre-Christmas sales. This may explain why the Redbook report showed a gain relative to that week.

Tomorrow, weather permitting, we'll have the Consumer Credit report for November. We'll have to wait another month before we find out how much of the December spending was put on the tab.

Byline: Lafferty (MF Merlin)