Recession? Who? Where? When? Not us. Not in America. And certainly not right now.

At this point, the incoming US macro data’s just a broken record playing on repeat. The worst of it’s “mixed,” the best of it’s scorching-hot. The flash read on services sector activity in December falls into the latter category, retail sales figures covering November the former.

Tuesday’s nominal sales readout was mostly uninteresting to the extent strength here offset weakness there to send a familiar overarching message: Consumption’s holding up fine. The headline showed a 0.7% advance, driven (sorry) by car-buying.

The ex-autos print, a 0.2% advance, undershot, printing just half the expected 0.4% gain.

Non-store retailers — i.e., shopping online — rose 1.8%, healthy to be sure. Or unhealthy to be sure, depending on your inclination to view the cult of consumerism as a disease.

Most importantly for GDP tracking, the control group rose 0.4%, matching estimates. That’s what counts, and… well, as noted above, it doesn’t evidence a looming downturn, let alone impending doom.

Car sales were (probably) juiced by replacement buying following the storms in October and online sales by holiday shopping, so I suppose you could make the case these figures would’ve been weak(er) were it not for “distortions.” You might also argue that some spending is front-loading ahead of expected price increases.

I’d be remiss not to remind readers that the preliminary read on University of Michigan sentiment for December saw perceptions of buying conditions for durables soar due entirely to the notion that it’s better to buy now than risk waiting around for the incoming administration to slap draconian duties on imports in pursuit of sundry foreign policy aims, some entirely unrelated to trade.

All of that said, there’s always a way to spin a given macro release as somehow not an accurate reflection of a deleterious — or otherwise subpar — underlying trend. I used to indulge in that sort of understated, analytical catastrophizing, but it’s disingenuous, so I stopped years ago.

As BMO’s Ian Lyngen pointed out, the three-month average annualized rate for the retail sales control group now stands at 5.6%, which he emphasized counts as the second highest in 15 months.

Industrial production undershot in Tuesday’s other US macro readout, but even after a slight downward revision, the Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow tracker shows the economy expanding a 3.1% pace. And yet, the Fed’s still cutting rates.