1115.org

It was a gloomy April for nation’s retailers San Francisco Chronicle (5/11/07):

Sales at stores open at least a year, known as same-store sales, fell by a record 2.4 percent in April, the worst since the International Council of Shopping Centers started tallying the monthly numbers in 1970.
[...]
Many chains had warned that April would be bad because Easter came later in the month last year, but even they were surprised by the results.
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Same-store sales at Old Navy fell by 20 percent compared with a 6 percent decline a year ago. And same-store sales at Banana Republic, the company’s only brand that has been performing well, fell by 13 percent compared with a 1 percent increase last year.
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Strong performers like American Eagle and Abercrombie & Fitch, which some analysts believed would come out on top, were not immune to the Easter shift. April same-store sales at American Eagle dropped by 10 percent and at Abercrombie & Fitch by 15 percent.

The Chronicle story hyped the early Easter as the key reason for the abysmal numbers, but even averaging March and April, a way to neutralize the timing, nets a lousy result:

The average for same-stores sales in March and April combined works out to a 1.8 percent increase versus a 4.3 percent increase last year for the same period.
[...]
This year’s combined average for the two months is the lowest it has been since 2003.

We’ll just go ahead and add this to the data streams to which Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson must not have access.