Dean Baker Sees Mystery Of US Retail Sales

Dean Baker writes this morning:

Retail sales came in higher than generally expected in August, with non-car sales rising 1.1 percent from July. This statistic is less impressive than it seems. If gas sales are taken out of the picture, then the increase in August was just half as large. If we look over the last two months, the rise in non-auto sales, excluding gas, has been less than 0.2 percent. This is not the road to recovery.

However, the bank analysts are quite impressed? Here are the flash comments by:
Danske Bank
BNP Paribas
Nomura

While looking at the chart, courtesy of Nordea Markets (note, those are nominal/inflated figures, real figures in perspective are here), should this be enough for the markets to celebrate? No, and nothing will stop the music.


The almost perma-bearish Mr. Macro at Nomura has a presentation with a following chart today:

However, I have no idea what does this mean, in fact!

And I cannot stop wondering, as Mike Fitzpatrick at MF Global writes today in his energy overview:

Countering the support off yesterday's economic data, and the tepid endorsement from Federal Reserve chairman Bernanke that recovery was underway, were figures from API which showed that crude stocks rose rather than falling as expected, and that product inventories had risen much more than forecast. Participants now await the EIA report, later this morning for contradiction or endorsement. The second half of the US inflation picture comes from the Labor Department's Consumer Price Index which rose by .4% in August but fell by 1.5% from a year ago. The Federal Reserve also published data showing that industrial production is picking up, improving for the second straight month. Naturally, as confidence in recovery rises, and a return to more normal commercial environment is anticipated, fundamentals should come more into focus. At the moment, rising product inventories, particularly distillates will cause concern. Excess productive capacity in Saudi Arabia shows the effect not only of OPEC production constraints, but also contracted demand. Even Chairman Bernanke warned that, "'even though from a technical perspective the recession is very likely over at this point, it's still going to feel like a very weak economy for some time"...

Why I thought that the US has not been driving the energy prices for years?
And also, why people pay attention to US manufacturing/industrial production data, if there is almost no manufacturing left in the country?