Several days ago, Bank Of America was "confused" why retail spending refuses to pick up, although it hoped that this would be a one time aberation and that the official government data would disprove what it was seeing in its card data. Well, that did not happen after the headline retail sales printed moments ago at -0.1% in December, falling from an upward revised 0.4%.

As Bloomberg summarizes, sales at U.S. retailers declined in December to wrap the weakest year since 2009, raising concern about the momentum in consumer spending heading into 2016.

This is where Janet Yellen decided to hike:

The 0.1 percent drop matched the median forecast of 84 economists surveyed by Bloomberg and followed a 0.4 percent gain in November, Commerce Department figures showed Friday in Washington. For all of 2015, purchases climbed 2.1 percent, the smallest advance of the current economic expansion.

But BofA's confusion should at least be resolved when looking at the core data, which was a big disappointment, as the Retail Sales ex auto was down 0.1% in December, below the 0.2% expected. Putting this miss in context, 66 out of 69 economists thought December retail sales ex autos would've been higher than actual.

But the biggest disappointment was the GDP-feeding control group which tumbled by 0.3%, a mirror image of the expected increase of 0.3%, and down from the revised 0.5% in November.

And just like that US retail sales put the wrap on the weakest year since 2009 as the manufacturing recession is now officially starting to spread to the service sector.