Cognitive Dissonance: Everywhere and All the Time
It was announced yesterday that retail sales in the U.S. for January increased by three percent over December. What? Retail sales up in January over December, the month of holiday shopping? This percent increase was the most significant monthly increase since March of 2021, when people were getting their first two vaccines.
How can retail sales go up in January? A totally surprising sub-headline was that department store sales were up 17.5% over December. What? There still are department stores, AND their sales are going up in January, a historically down month for the category?
In addition to this increase in retail sales, it was reported earlier this month that more than 500,000 jobs were added in January, more than two times the expected numbers.
These numbers come after the Fed has been raising interest rates for a year. Both of these numbers come after financial heavyweights spent all last fall debating whether the inevitable recession – due to rates and the high price of oil- was going to be a “hard” or “soft landing”. This has created the expectation that a recession is ahead sometime in 2023.
The cognitive dissonance of this is obvious: retail sales increase when they shouldn’t, and half a million jobs are created when the economy is supposedly moving toward a recession. Huh?
What is going on with this US economy?
If we are moving toward a recession this shouldn’t be happening, but it is.
Cognitive Dissonance.
Last month I wrote a column about this, highlighting my book that was published in 2021 “The 2020s: A Decade of Cognitive Dissonance”
Why is there cognitive dissonance in the 2020s?
