US Economic Week in Review: Strong Retail Sales and Modest Inflationary Pressures

            This week was light on the U.S. economic news front; there were only two releases of import: retail sales and CPI.

            Retail sales were strong: they increased .4% M/M and 5.4% Y/Y.  Ex-auto, the numbers were .4% and 6.3% respectively.  Here’s the data in graph form: