Today's animal spirits is brought to you by our friends at Y-charts.

Last week's show, we talked about how retail sales continue to be otherworldly,

up like 15%.

And a lot of people said, okay, that's fine.

What about inflation?

Boom.

Now show inflation after...

Pre-1980.

Pre-1980.

Now show after inflation is the new now show Japan.

So Y-charts actually has US real retail sales, real meaning after inflation.

They actually have it on a year-over-year basis.

So you take out the high and the low from the pandemic,

which you had this huge crater, and then you had this huge spike.

So those sort of offset each other.

The prints are still coming in hot.

So after inflation, US retail sales are still up over 8%.

That's the highest level, again, after inflation since 1999,

which is the highest level it's been pre-pandemic before.

So I get it, inflation is running hot,

and that's skewing a lot of numbers.

But people are still spending a ton of money right now

...