RETAIL SALES DROPPED: “But it seems to me that this is actually good news for consumers and, in the long run, the economy. Americans are massively over their heads in debt, and have been consuming beyond their means for a long time. The data shows them cutting back their spending to more reasonable levels, and cutting back the most in the most discretionary categories. I feel bad for Hermes and all, but we couldn’t keep propping them up forever.”

So my suspicion that jewelry sales were off, mentioned earlier, seems to have been right — but not as right as it would be if this headline accurately reflected the story!

UPDATE: They’ve fixed the headline now. It used to say that jewelry sales dropped 80%; now it says they dropped for 80% of jewelers, which is what the story actually reports.