The Peter Ships Show.

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We got a lot of economic data out this morning, but I want to focus on the two more important

ones, at least as far as the markets and the fed seem to be concerned.

One is the retail sales numbers for May.

The expectation was for decline of 0.5.

And instead we drop by 1.3%.

Now there was a revision to the prior month, which I guess takes some of the sting out of

it, because that month was originally reported at zero, and it was upperly revised to 0.9.

And still that's a pretty substantial decline on a month over a month basis.

And I think what it really is showing is that rising prices are taking a bite out of real

consumer spending.

And remember, these retail sales numbers are not adjusted for inflation.

So if retail sales are going up, it could be simply a function of prices going up, not

meaning that consumers bought more, just that consumers paid more for the stuff they bought.

But what I think is actually happening is because stuff is so much more expensive and

consumers are paying more, they're actually buying less.

In fact, the numbers got worse.

If you look at them, ex-Gasoline and vehicles, they were expecting a rise of 0.2.

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