MasterCard Advisors SpendingPulse: April 2010 Total U.S. Retail Sales Report

MasterCard Advisors SpendingPulse, a macro-economic report tracking total national retail and service sales across all payments platforms, today provided summary results for April 2010. Kamalesh Rao, Director of Economic Research for MasterCard Advisors SpendingPulse, reported that following three months of steady, month-to-month growth averaging about 2%, total U.S. retail sales ex-auto stopped to catch its breath in April, falling by 2% since March on a seasonally adjusted basis.

For more information on MasterCard Advisors and SpendingPulse visit:
http://www.mastercardadvisors.com/
http://www.mastercardadvisors.com/us/advisors/en/information_analytics/spendi...
http://www.mastercardadvisors.com/us/advisors/en/information_analytics/spendi...

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• MasterCard
• MasterCard Advisors
• SpendingPulse
• Kamalesh Rao
• retail spending
• U.S. economy

[bblair0039]

Excellent report. Thanks. But, can I just make one tiny observation: Economic commentators too often talk about the "road to recovery" and "green shoots" - as if it's happening - no matter how tortuous the path. We hear about the "long road to recovery", the "slow road to recovery", the "rocky road". It reflects a sort of unscientific bias - that we should see some positive in the data. That would not be too harmful if it wasn't sometimes blinding to the chance that there may be no recovery.