In split vote on economy, the oys have it

OY vey! And that’s saying a lot when it comes from an Italian guy from Brooklyn. But the Federal Reserve exasperated everyone with the policy statement on interest rates that it released on Wednesday. How so? If the Fed truly believed the US economy was healthy, it would start warning the financial markets that interest rates are about to rise.

This is all about the wording in the press release that the Fed’s Open Market Committee puts out after its regular policy meetings — announcements that are parsed more carefully than the pope’s words on dogs and heaven. (I had to give equal time to the Catholics out there.)

The Fed bigwigs held a twoday meeting this week, and Wall Street expected them to remove the phrase “considerable time” in reference to how long interest rates would remain abnormally low.

While that phrase was moved around a little in the statement — creating even more confusion — it was still there.

“The committee judges that it can be patient in beginning to normalize the stance on monetary policy,” the Fed said, adding “it likely will be appropriate to maintain the 0 percent to 0.25 percent target range for the federal funds rate for a considerable time ...”

That’s all Wall Street traders needed to hear.

The Fed has Wall Street addicted to cheap credit, and Wednesday’s message was that it would continue to give the stock market its fix. Zoom! the Dow Jones industrial average, which had been down a thousand points in recent weeks, recovered about onequarter of that loss in a flash.

It didn’t hurt that this is an options expiration week and we are nearing the end of the calendar quarter. Professional money managers were itching for a rally so that their performance would look better to clients on New Year’s Day.

But — as hard as it is to do — forget the stock market for a moment. It’s cruising along with investors drunk behind the wheel.

What’s perplexing the thinkers on Wall Street — as opposed to the traders — is that the Fed doesn’t seem very confident about the US economy. The question is: Why?

It could, of course, be that Fed Chair Janet Yellen is simply worried that economic weakness in the rest of the world will hurt us. Financial illness overseas can get here quicker than Ebola. Or is it something else? I’ve been telling you that the economy is growing at only a moderate pace of about 2 percent a year when you ignore all the nips and tucks in the official statistics.

That’s not very impressive, especially if the Fed is about to reduce that growth by raising borrowing costs.

My readers already know that I don’t trust the US economic statistics. I think the Census Bureau has been doing a poor job of accu rately depicting our economy.

And I also mentioned recently that the robust job growth in November that was reported by the Labor Department was mainly due to abnormal seasonal adjustments.

Today, I’d like to add one more thing to the list of questionable economic data: retail sales.

Retailers don’t seem to be having an abnormally good Christmas. Yet the Census Bureau recently announced an increase of 0.7 percent in retail sales in November from the previous month.

That’s a freakin’ great number! And retail sales accounted for one of the figures that convinced Wall Street that the Fed would change its tone in Tuesday’s press release.

But if you take a close look at the press release put out by Census on Dec. 11 at precisely 8:30 a.m., you will notice something. Go to Table 1: Estimated Monthly Sales for Retail and Food Services, by Kind of Business, on the second page of the release.

This has to be a homework as signment because I can’t print the table here.

But when you get to the table, look at the two columns on the left — Not Adjusted 11 Month Total.

There are no statistics. Just asterisks, which mean “advance estimates are not available for this kind of business.” So the Census Bureau had to guess — but didn’t know — the actual sales at stores selling new cars; auto parts and tires; appliances; TVs; cameras; computers; software; building material; beer, wine and liquor; drugs; men and women’s clothing; shoes; and a whole lot more. It’s exhausting just listing everything Census didn’t know when reporting those freakin’ great retail sales.

So maybe the Fed is smarter than Wall Street thinks. Maybe there are reasons it doesn’t believe the economy is doing so great. Maybe the Fed should just come out and say so.

Oy gevalt, as they say in my old neighborhood. And, by the way, Happy Hanukkah!