Car-Buying Surge Sparks Best Retail Sales Rise Since April

``The driver of all this exuberance: Vehicle sales which surged once again +1.7% MoM courtesy of an overabundance of subprime loans. Oddly, for all those prognosticators looking for windfall tax cuts from the oil price plunge, gasoline station sales dropped only 0.8% MoM, well less than expectations and not exactly the consumption-boosting exuberance every talking head proclaims. These numbers appear to be clearly in the "Fed wants to hike" narrative.''