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I wonder if they took into account normal seasonal variation in their data. From the looks of it, they didn't.

It's mighty hard to draw conclusions from one year's worth of data. We see consumer spending spiking again in December. Is it Christmas (.com), or is it a recovery?

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I completely agree. They claim this is a 'quantitative' analysis, but it's really anecdotally describing a graph. They should have removed seasonal variations, used a larger data set, and tried a couple time series models. Maybe in a couple years, when they actually have more data, it will be more meaningful.

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