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Peter.

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We got some economic news that came out earlier this morning.

I want to start by looking at the retail sales numbers for the month of January because

coming into January we had had three consecutive drops in retail sales.

In fact, the December drop which was originally reported as a minus point seven was revised

to a larger drop of 1% and in fact excluding vehicles, the decline of 1.4 was increased

to a decline of 1.8 and excluding vehicles and gasoline.

The drop actually went from down 2.1 to 2.5.

So December's numbers were actually worse than we were originally told from the perspective

of how much stuff Americans bought.

Personally, I think would be better off if we bought less stuff, but that's the topic for

a different podcast.

We got the January numbers.

The expectation was for a rebound.

The consensus was for a 1.1% gain in January numbers and we blew that away.

The actual number, at least until they revise it next month, was an increase of 5.3%.

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