Someday The Consumer May Fade...

... but not, apparently, today.  From MarketWatch:

U.S. retail sales increased 0.6% in March, the Commerce Department said Thursday, with unexpected strength in auto and building materials sales.

"The big picture for the consumer still looks good," said Stephen Stanley, chief economist for RBS Greenwich Capital...

Excluding the 1.6% rise in auto sales, retail sales increased 0.4%, as expected.

Sales in February were revised higher to show a 0.8% decline from the previously reported 1.4% decline. Sales rose 3% in January.

People are impressed.  From Bloomberg...

"This is really good, rosy, expansionary data,'' said Jason Schenker, an economist at Wachovia Corp. in Charlotte, North Carolina. "This is a pretty picture.''

... from BusinessWeek online...

"The big picture for the consumer still looks good," said Stephen Stanley, chief economist at RBS Greenwich Capital. "The ongoing spike in gasoline prices will probably curtail demand for other goods for a month or two at some point in the spring, but there is still not much evidence that the consumer is on the cusp of slowing down in any meaningful way."

... from BBC News:

"Consumer spending is going to hang in stronger this quarter than a lot of people thought because of job and wage growth," Michael Gregory, a senior economist at investment bank BMO Nesbitt Burns in Toronto, said before the Commerce Department report.

"That's going to result in good performance for the US economy."

... from the Financial Times:

“When we take it all together, I think it shows an economy that still has got forward momentum,” said economist Ned Riley of Riley Asset Management in Boston. He added that it likely meant the Federal Reserve will raise rates again “once if not twice” to keep price pressures in check.

Aha! There it is.  Good news is gas to central bankers, I guess.  The Wall Street Journal picks up the theme, with just a bit more qualification:

Labor market and import price data, meanwhile, suggest that job gains remain on solid footing with little or no inflationary pressure emanating from overseas...

However, continuing jobless claims -- the number of workers drawing unemployment benefits for more than a week -- dropped by 4,000 to 2,424,000, the lowest level since Jan. 20, 2001.

Payroll gains have averaged just below 200,000 during the first three months of the year, pushing the unemployment rate to a nearly five-year low at 4.7%.

Economists worry that further strong job gains and unemployment rate declines could trigger more aggressive Federal Reserve tightening in an effort to ward off labor-cost driven inflation. The central bank is widely expected to raise the fed funds rate by 25 basis points in May to 5%, but some banks think the funds rate could go still higher, to 5.5%.

Yet any inflationary pressures arising from a tight job market may be offset by cheaper imported goods. Import prices fell 0.4%, after falling 0.5% in February, the Labor Department reported. March's decline was the third in four months.

And there was this safety-valve-like comment:

"I think the first quarter will come in with very strong consumer spending," said Kurt Karl, chief U.S. economist for Swiss Reinsurance in New York. "But we import a lot of things, so it's not going to be a huge quarter for GDP growth."

Ok, there's a prediction we'll wait for.