Green Shoots Reports From All Over

Weekly initial unemployment claims are ascending again, up 4,000 from previous week, to 558,000. Details.

July retail sales declined 0.1 percent, short of "consensus estimates" prophesying a 0.6 percent gain. Details.

As Radley Balko noted earlier today, foreclosures are up, Way up. (Calculated Risk cautions that previous RealtyTrac figures have been questioned by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.)

By the way, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 has been the law of the land for 25 weeks. So if we posit Economic Policy Institute's claim that 720,000 total jobs have been neither created nor destroyed neither out far nor in deep waxed and topped saved or created, that would mean the jobless claims would have been 28,800 higher -- 586,800 -- without ARRA.