Retail sales are given a big statistical adjustment in February as it's quietest month of the year. No telling if they're goosing the numbers.

But the big retail spending problem is this.

It's 70% of us GDP, 70% of the economy.

The US consumer has for decades been the engine of economic growth, buying the world's products and growing the global economy.

But since 1980 median wages have been static but living costs have risen, forcing the US consumer to go into debt to finance their lifestyles.

Over the past decade that debt has been secured on their houses, something that was rising in value and looked to be an ATM machine.

But now those houses are falling to half their value so the US consumer is now heavily indebted with no increase in earnings and can't borrow any more as their assets have halved in value.

So how is the economy going to pick up? It will do at some point but it'll probably be a dead cat bounce when it does, it's hard to see what's going to drive substantial future growth right now.