Post-Thanksgiving sales are up. And why wouldn't they be? The Faux Depression is based primarily on a bad housing market caused by people who couldn't afford to pay their mortgages over-purchasing in the hope of making a killing on the re-sale. So, they failed... who cares? Most of the people who have lost their homes have gone from a mortgage (ie, a debt) they couldn't afford, to a rent bill that they can. I fail to see the problem when it comes to short term consumer spending.
And with gas prices plummeting, people can now afford to drive to the stores.
Sales rose to $10.6 billion, the Chicago-based company said in a statement. The increase was the smallest since a decline of 0.9 percent in 2005 and compares with a jump of 8.3 percent last year. “So far, so good,” said Craig Johnson, president of Customer Growth Partners LLC, a retail consulting firm based in New Canaan, Connecticut. “But a decent Black Friday figure doesn’t predict the whole season. The question is, how much momentum we can keep” in this “challenging” economic environment, Johnson said.
U.S. retailers are making earlier and deeper price cuts to lure Christmas shoppers, who are coping with the shrinking values of homes and stock holdings along with increasing joblessness. The season can account for as much as a third of annual profit.
November and December sales at U.S. stores open at least a year may rise 1 percent, the smallest gain since 2002, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers, a New York- based trade group.
I'm not denying that the economy is significantly below average right now. But it's pretty nice to remember that in America, we call small increases in growth and historically low unemployment a "poor economy."
Personally, I'm pausing to reflect on how blessed we are in this country, where most of us are still busy fighting traffic in order to buy all the trivial, unnecessary crap we'll be giving our loved ones this Christmas. In actual poor economies worldwide, people don't do this.
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