sales were at $528 billion. in 2017, the estimate for this holiday season, $682 billion. a spokesperson for mastercard said, overall, this year it was a big win for retailers, and jon, it is not over yet. the bargain shoppers are the ones who will be out and hitting the sales all the way to the end of the year. jon: some more cash registers to come. anita vogel from los angeles. thank you. new york city empire state building showing off festive display on christmas day with a red and green lights and a candy cane antenna. the tower is featuring a music delight show, featuring quest to stephani you make a file christmas. the l.e.d. lights with that they can have 16 million colors, and a whole new array of digital effects. jon: wow. president trump is looking ahead
of the spenders are in where they back? the truth is, retail spending has been strong ever since black friday, since last month and the cash registers have just continued to ring all the way up through christmas day. some of the major credit card companies saying that many retailers benefited this year have christmas day following a monday giving shoppers at full weekend open up their wallets for those last-minute buys. experts at high consumer confidence and a robust job market boosted u.s. retail sales during the holiday period arriving at the best since 2011. according to the national retail federation. sales were at 528 billion. take a look at the numbers in 2017, the estimates for this holiday season, 682 billion. a spokesperson from mastercard says overall come of this was a big win for retail this year with a lot of the boost coming from online shopping.
financially is speculative type of conclusion dependent upon a lot of unknowns. what is known is for those companies that sponsor this kind of benefit they are required by the rules to reflect this. so it will be very, very difficult for companies to say well, we re going to think we re going to get down the road and therefore we should be booking some kind of new asset. frankly given the various cuts for example, 528 billion dollars of medicare cuts a lot of companies may be concerned that over time those kinds of cost are going to be shifted to employers. the fact that the mandate enforcement penalty is so low may encourage a number of young people to forforego coverage pay the penalty and if they get sick obtain the coverage from new insurance those are all big question marks at the moment this issue unfortunately is not a question mark. megyn: this call from congress from henry waxman has got ain lot of coverage. there s an interesting