Weekly Info 01/13/2012

The one bright spot in the world is the resilience of the US economy, not re-entering the recession so widely forecast last fall, and so far impervious to events in Europe. A surge in consumer credit (10% annual growth rate in November) may or may not indicate consumer and banking revival, or survive revision, but beats contraction. Consumer confidence numbers are in a sustained rise, sometimes correlating with a better job market. Tempering that enthusiasm, the ballyhooed holiday retail sales did not take place: fibbers on the stock-market channels oversold a mere point-one percent gain in December sales. Small-biz surveyor NFIB found a fourth-straight monthly gain, but shallow- slope, net index no better than last January. On concern for the rest of the world, 10-year T-notes have fallen to 1.85% today, but there is no mortgage follow-through, largely because of the unspeakably stupid mortgage-rate surcharge imposed to pay for part of the Social Security tax cut.