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Consumer spending in the U.S. rose 0.7 percent in December, more than forecast, capping its strongest quarter in more than four years, according to figures from the Commerce Department. Mike McKee and Betty Liu report on Bloomberg Television‘s “In the Loop.” (Source: Bloomberg)

Look, I am not refuting the data, but come on, really? I would say that consumer spending as a whole, is not up at all. In fact, I would say it’s down quite a bit.

First of all, look at the sources that are reporting higher sales…Coach, Tiffany’s and other high-end retailers. This is not the common household and does not represent consumer spending accurately.

Second, the reports say that manufacturing is submitting a greater number of purchase orders and that they are doing more hiring. Well, I can say that they are probably putting in orders because they want to fix their price on those orders from China and other countries, so they can benefit from today and not tomorrow. As far as employment goes, there are a lot of Fortune 500 companies that still post jobs, but don’t fill them or they fill them internally and now assign several roles to one person, where it took three people to fill those roles before.

Next time give us the real numbers that contain all of the data and not just a half truth.