So far it's been a pretty light week but what little economic data that has been released is bad, and all of it evidences the recession that nobody wants to acknowledge

Let's start with the Consumer Credit numbers that came out on Monday.  Not only was the number extremely weak, but the revisions to the prior month were even weaker

The initial report for the growth in consumer credit in December was $21.3 billion

Now I don't think growth in consumer credit is good; I think it undermines long-term living standards

The last thing you want to do is borrow money to consume, one of the points I really hammered home in my book, "How an Economy Grows and Why it Crashes"

If you haven't bought that book, you should get a copy

Be sure to pick the collector's edition because, in addition to being a really beautiful book, it has two entirely new chapters.  If you already have the original one, buy the collector's edition and give the original away to a friend.

Consumers should not borrow to consume.  They should save to consume.

Businesses should use our savings to invest in capital equipment to grow the economy

When you consume savings, you undermine long-term economic growth and therefore future consumption is diminished

The problem is we're living in a bubble, and in order to sustain this bubble economy, consumers have to keep spending

In this economy, however in order to keep spending they have to keep borrowing because they're certainly not earning, and they don't have any savings

 This has to blow up eventually but right now, it's all about keeping the music going

Consumer credit was revised down from the originally reported $21.3 billion to just $6.4 billion of growth

They were looking for January to grow by $16.5 billion, and of course, this also includes student loans, as well as credit cards

Instead, we got an increase of just $10.5 billion

Consumer credit growth imploded in December and January

If there's all this job creation why aren't these newly-employed people spending money?

This shows you the jobs are going to people who already have part-time jobs, and need to supplement hours and wages

Also, we got the Small Business Optimism Index, which last month was 93.9, and there was an expectation that it would increase to 94.2, that small businesses would be a little more optimistic, yet it dropped a full point to 92.9 - the lowest level in 2 years

If that is the case, why are they hiring people?

The type of hiring that is going on is hiring part time workers to replace full-time workers

Which brings me to the data that came out today: Wholesale Trade

Inventories were expected to drop, but they increased by .3%

And the inventory for December was revised from -.1 to unchanged

The reason inventories spiked is because sales collapsed

The inventory to sales ratio just hit a new high, at 1.35

This is a 7-year high. The last time the inventory to sales ratio was this high was in April of 2009.  We were still knee-deep in the Great Recession

If this recovery even exists, why isn't the merchandise being bought?

At some point this year, the lone remaining bright spot in this horrible economic landscape - the number of jobs being created - will turn down

We got more disappointing corporate earnings news this week

The reason the stock market is moving slightly up is because of the sentiment that the Fed will not raise rates in the near future

It's not just the stock market - Oil is above $38/barrel

Also some of the industrial metals have had huge spikes

And of course, the dollar is going down against other currencies

The Australian dollar hit an 8- month high

The Canadian dollar hit a 4-month high

The New Zealand dollar was also at an 8-month high until the Reserve Bank of New Zealand surprised the markets and cut interest rates from 2.5% to 2.25% and that sent the New Zealand dollar tanking from +1% to -1.5%

One of the reasons the Reserve Bank gave was that in...