Amazon earnings decline amid a spending resurgence

Give Amazon.com Inc. credit for being unpredictable.When Amazon delivered second-quarter earnings on Thursday, it was a 180-degree turn from the Amazon that the financial world had seen for the last six months or more. That Amazon was confusingly lacking in the eye-popping rates of sales growth that had been the company’s trademark for the last few years.In its place, though, was a suddenly profitable beast—at least by Amazon’s parsimonious standards. Investors felt pretty good