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Despite all the rancor about seasonally-adjusted ad hoc beats of holiday week retail sales (amid burgeoning discounts), the trend (post the Hurricane Sandy-driven surge) in GAFO (General Merchandise, Apparel and Accessories, Furniture and Other Sales) retail sales is most explicitly lower. As Bloomberg Brief notes, consumer incomes are in a fragile state and between the ATRA deal and a 'stable' at best unemployment picture, it seems that the YoY change in retail sales is indicating per capita disposable income is set to decline further. As Rich Yamarone concludes: it appears "You can't spend what you don't have." It seems 'tax-the-rich' is also misfiring as those making over $90k per year report recent spending at its lowest for this time of year since 2008.

The Cliff is dead; long live the Cliff.  Yesterday’s impressive market rally was a great way to kick off the New Year, but (as ConvergEx's Nicholas Colas notes) we do have 251 trading days to go before we can lock in those gains and dance a celebratory jig.  The market’s psychological pendulum swings between extremes of “Macro” and “micro” focus, and we shouldn’t take it for granted that the stock market’s positive take on the Fiscal Cliff negotiations portend a better economy, a stronger financial picture for the U.S., or any of the actual nuts-and-bolts which hold together the framework of corporate earnings and cash flows.  Colas' prime concern is that the increase in Social Security tax withholding by 2 percentage points – back to its pre-2011 12.4% - will take a chunk out of the spending power for tens of millions of households.  In the abstract, the amounts involved are not huge – perhaps 50 basis points of GDP.  But everything counts when GDP growth remains stubbornly subpar.

With the resurgence of gun control politics storming to stage center over the past 72 hours, and providing yet another fulcrum point of social division precisely at the time when the nation is already hopelessly divided on other key political talking points which look set to push the Fiscal Cliff debate unresolved into 2013, below we provide two useful benchmarks to frame the "gun debate." The first, courtesy of WaPo, is an interactive chart of all mass shootings, including all the relevant details, taking place in 2012. The second, is a dispassionate and fact-based observation courtesy of BusinessWeek of the realities and challenges facing politicians, and the broader society, as America grapples with 200+ years of Second amendment history on one hand, and a society that is ever more "troubled", and increasingly prone to violence and murder on the other.

Update: The focus now shifts to the mother, the first casualty of her son's murderous rampage, who was a "big, big gun fan" as the NYT explains, and who went target shooting with her children, one of whom had Asperger's.

As we reported last night, buried inside the NYT biopic of Newtown shooter Adam Lanza was arguably one of the most important missing pieces in the story, at least so far, which could provide clues into partially explaining yesterday's tragic loss of young life, namely that the 20 year old man suffered from Asperger Syndrome, a high-functioning form of autism (two conditions which are being merged in the upcoming update of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-5) manual of mental disorders), which has been traditionally associated with social communication difficulties, including flat affect, and one which in some clinical studies has been shown to have a causal link to violence. In other words, in addition to the surge in the debate over national gun control and access limitations (ignoring that the perpetrator of the biggest school mass murder in US history - the Bath School disaster - used openly purchased dynamite and no guns, also ignoring that in the US there are roughly 300 million firearms), perhaps there should also be a broad discussion as to the risks of social misadoption of children with autism and other social and behavioral disorders.

Your comprehensive yet concise, one-stop summary of all the bullish and bearish events of the past week.

Two months ago, there were various prominent pundits who were furiously mocked and ridiculed by those whose job in the media it is to mock and ridicule, for suggesting what most know: that economic data is widely nuanced, massaged, adjusted, goalseeked and outright manipulated by various political interests. That someone would feign outrage by this allegation is laughable at best (and sorry, the "too many people were involved to keep it a secret" excuse is now absolute rubbish following the confirmation of Liborgate, yet another conspiracy theory until it became a conspiracy fact), yet all the "serious" outlets of insight did just that. Now that the election is over, for one reason or another "unnuanced" normalcy is about to strike back with a vengeance, as soon as tomorrow with the official release of November jobs data. And if the just released Gallup unemployment data is any indication, the amount of outright goalseeking by the fine folks at the BLS was nothing short of startling. Because after recording an adjusted unemployment rate of 7.4% in October, the November unemployment rate, based on a random sample of 29,308 adults, soared by a whopping 0.9% in one month to 8.3%, the most since the Great financial crisis itself! And furthermore, at 8.3% the unemployment rate is now the highest since May. Is it time yet for all those sellsiders to admit they were wrong weeks after producing beautiful pitchbooks of how 2013 will be "different this time" and the economy will soar? Or should we wait a few weeks first?

Ahead of today's presidential and congressional elections, Goldman provides some brief thoughts on various election-night (and beyond) events. From a viewer's guide to the poll-closing times to a discussion of the apparent 'closeness' of the race and post-election market performance, they note that equity performance post 'tight' races has been better than in elections where the winner is more clear-cut. This election has a twist though in that it will be immediately followed by debate on the fiscal cliff, and thus resolution of the election will reduce, but not eliminate policy uncertainty.

People are going to be pissed off no matter who wins this election and that is a very important social dynamic we believe is vastly under appreciated by the majority of mainstream pundits and analysts out there.  This is also very distinct from the environment that prevailed in 2008. Should Romney win, the 28% of Americans that identify as Republican will be thrilled, and the remaining 72% will be largely upset and on edge.  Should Obama win, similarly, the 32% registered Democrat with be thrilled and the remaining 68% will be upset and on edge.  Hence, the 70% referred to in the title of this article.  This is a recipe ripe for social unrest and it will be coming to our shores as we outlined recently in The Global Spring.

What if the fiscal cliff collides with a replay of the Bush vs Gore 2000 election fiasco...

Gallup just announced the results of their latest poll and find Romney has overtaken Obama 49% to 47% among 'Likely Voters'. Obama still holds the lead among 'Registered voters' but this headline was enough to cause a dramatic crash (back under 60%) in Obama's odds on Intrade's market. Critically, the entire post-QEternity bump that Obama-believers had bought, has now been retraced as it seems the old adage "As Goes AAPL, So Goes Obama" is proving true...

Whether it is a fringe-blog pointing out the statistical un-possibility (here and here), or a previously well-respected 'elite' pointing out the suspiciousness (here), most of the general public (or their media-based oracles) prefer not to swallow the red pill of reality with regard Friday's data SNAFU. However, given the political (and economic) consequence of a single-number, Gallup has decided to weigh in on reality as they note "even though the Household survey tends to be very volatile, this decline seems to lack face-validity, particularly after the prior month's numbers" as they analyse why the household results should be discounted heavily. Critically, they, like us, suggest the 'unemployment rate' needs to be replaced as a measure of joblessness, suggesting a far simpler (and more transparent) measure - Payroll-to-Population - would avoid the 'adjustments' and 'biases' that are inherent in the BLS's bafflement. The Gallup measure suggests, as one would perceive using common-sense, that the real jobs situation was essentially unchanged last month.

SS Ponzi is approaching a cliff.

Gallup's US economic confidence index surged 11 points last week (more than the 10 points when Bin Laden was killed) and has reached levels comparable to the pre-crisis highs from January 2008. As Gallup notes, it appears that the spark for the dramatic rise in Americans' economic confidence last week was the Democratic National Convention. A review of Gallup's nightly tracking results shows that the index was consistently near or below -25 each night in late August and early September, but then sharply improved on Sept. 4, the first night of the convention, to -18. Confidence then held at or near -18 through Sunday, despite the dismal August unemployment report Friday morning showing continued weak jobs growth. More specifically, the convention appears to have given Democrats and, to a lesser degree, independents, fresh optimism about the economy. We can only assume that the cognitive dissonance of the hope-holding believers-in-change will not carry through to real economic growth or all those other 'hopers' - the 'this-time-QE-is-different' crowd - will be sadly disappointed.

One of the deepest mysteries related to the ongoing rally in U.S. equities is the persistent lack of retail investor involvement. QAs we have vociferously noted, U.S. equity mutual fund flows remain solidly negative and interest in single stock trading among individual investors is similarly moribund - while corporate bond volumes remain flat and Treasury volumes higher.  As Nick Colas, of ConvergEx group, notes, one missing link to explain this dichotomy must be the fundamental lack of financial literacy among U.S. retail investors, yet this relationship is seldom mentioned as a reason for this group’s ongoing apathy in the face of 4-year highs for domestic stocks. You might argue that “It was always thus…” and that is a fair point.   American investors haven’t grown dumber on financial matters in the last decade; they never had the requisite knowledge to begin with.  But it does appear that the events of the last few years have caused some kind of “Tipping point” with regard to investors’ ability to process the world around them.