Last fall, the bulls tried to hype Black Friday retail sales and every once in a while, a Wal-Mart report gets spun as evidence that the consumer is doing great. The same thing goes for the monthly retail sales report…just check back to the February 13, 2008 data, how it was presented by the media and how the market responded. So if we have a positive reaction to the retail sales being reported today, it’s more of the same speculation that the consumer is “resilient”, “strong”, “healthy”, “not so sick” or whatever you want to believe. As I wrote in February, I expected the government’s fiscal irresponsibility stimulus plan would be seen in consumer spending data before the checks were sent and we would experience a surge in credit card purchases. If you didn’t read yesterday’s story about the humongous increase in consumer credit last month, please do that now by clicking here.  This will not be the last time that retail sales data is overemphasized and spun by the bulls/media.  However, this will likely be the last time I try to debunk it.