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Retail Sales Data and the Business Press

Regularly on business news programs there are comments about how bad the last day, weekend, or month was because of some weather event(s) and how this ruined retail sales for that period.

I view this negativism as mostly bunk. It snows over a weekend, and magically whatever money people planned to spend during that period magically turns into savings, with the retail sales people permanantly losing that revenue. This is in essence the reported viewpoint. While some level of impulse buying is curtailed by bad weather, if that is the engine that drives our economy, then we are doomed. If I need to buy something and the weather makes it difficult or impossible I will simply delay my purchase. In the end the retailer still get my purchase just later in time.

When the weather becomes an important part of our daily business report it was a slow news day, and the reporters, editors and producers are creating a news story to keep us listening to them.

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