Retail’s Pending Recession – Fueled By Inflation With Seeds Of Stagnation

Retail’s Pending Recession – Fueled By Inflation With Seeds Of Stagnation

The Cyclone rollercoaster at Coney Island at night. (Photo by: Loop Images/Universal Images Group ... [+] via Getty Images) While everyone awaits the release of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) on Tuesday April 12, those who follow the retail roller coaster are fixated on the train slowly ascending the hill, as retail executives wonder about the next curve and the bottom of the dip. The coaster may (or may not) be modeled after the Cyclone at Coney Island, but the ride and the thrills are definitely cut from the same piece of cloth. Robert Frost nailed it when he wrote: "some say the world will end in fire, others say in ice. From what I've tasted of desire, I hold with those who favor fire." In the context of Frost, retail doesn't exactly know how their consumers will perform as they face a barrage of skyrocketing price increases. Will 2022 be fire or will it be ice? Perhaps the predictive indexes (like the CPI) will tell the story. The Federal Reserve (Fed) prefers to look at the Personal Consumption Expenditure Index (PCE) for inflation guidance and those recently published numbers were disastrous. The next jolt arrives as the Consumer Price