Again, abbreviated, because in addition to not fullying balancing work and blogging, I’m feeling a bit off today.

The lede is obviously that the Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan survey showed a decline in consumer sentiment.

On the other side of the coin is that economics retail sales retail sales rose unexpectedly in February, confounding economists who thought that the snowpocalypse would push the numbers down.

Sales rose by 0.3%, which is beat expectations, but this is off a January where the delta in retail sales was revised from 0.5% to 0.1%, so the delta from is .3%-.4%=-.1%, so the total picture at the end of February is actually down from what it was on February 1.

Finally, Calculated Risk points out (see chart pr0n) that inventories are now basically in line with sales, which means that inventory replenishment bumps to GDP are pretty much done.