Think the economy is bad now? Just wait. Do not confuse realism with pessimism, my friends. You can not have stability, let alone growth, while we continue to shed jobs. It's that simple. LITTLE ELSE MATTERS. 2009 will be worse than 2008, and there's every indication that we're going to have a swimming pool shaped recovery thereafter. On the plus side, you'll score amazing real estate, art, jewelry, auto, clothing deals if you have cold, hard cash. U.S. Economy: Retail Sales Decline for a Record Sixth Month http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601068&sid=aQsxbPk3Bs3I&refer=home By Bob Willis Jan. 14 (Bloomberg) -- Sales at U.S. retailers fell more than twice as much as forecast in December as job losses and the lack of credit led Americans to cut back on everything from car purchases to eating out. The 2.7 percent slump marked the sixth straight month of declines, the longest string since comparable records began in 1992, the Commerce Department said today in Washington. Labor Department data showed the global collapse in commodities caused prices of goods imported by the U.S. to fall for a fifth month. Todayâs sales figures indicate the hit to spending in the recession is even deeper than estimated, and spurred a sell-off in stocks. The loss of 2.6 million jobs and declining home and stock values are squeezing households, hurting retailers from Wal-Mart Stores Inc. to Tiffany & Co., which today said its holiday sales fell 21 percent and cut its earnings forecast. âThere is a major retrenchment going on,â said Joshua Shapiro, chief U.S. economist at Maria Fiorini Ramirez Inc., a New York forecasting firm. âAll that policy can do at this stage is cushion this. You canât short circuit it.â Commerce also reported that inventories at all businesses in November dropped 0.7 percent, more than economists estimated and the third straight decrease. A 1.7 percent decline in stockpiles at retailers, as furniture stores and auto dealers cut back, paced the overall slump. Stocks Slump Treasuries rallied, sending yields on benchmark 10-year notes down to 2.18 percent at 10:50 a.m. in New York, from 2.29 percent late yesterday. The Standard & Poorâs 500 Stock Index slid 3.7 percent to 839.68. Retail sales were projected to fall 1.2 percent after an originally reported 1.8 percent drop the prior month, according to the median estimate of 78 economists in a Bloomberg News survey. Forecasts ranged from declines of 3.5 percent to 0.3 percent. Todayâs report will serve as a reminder to lawmakers of the urgency to enact President-elect Barack Obamaâs stimulus proposals to combat the recession. Obama, who takes office Jan. 20, is proposing a two-year recovery plan that includes about $300 billion in tax cuts for individuals and businesses and infrastructure spending aimed at creating or saving 4 million jobs. âItâs not too late to change course -- but only if we take immediate and dramatic action,â Obama said in his weekly radio address on Jan. 10. Import Prices Labor Department figures showed the import-price index decreased 4.2 percent, less than economists forecast, after a revised 7 percent drop in November. Prices from a year earlier were down 9.3 percent, the largest year-over-year decline since the index was first published in 1982. Prices excluding fuels dropped 1.1 percent last month. âThis is a reflection of the synchronicity of a slowdown in demand worldwide,â said Jonathan Basile, an economist at Credit Suisse Holdings USA Inc. in New York. Retail sales fell 0.1 percent for all of 2008 compared with the prior year, the first decrease in the Commerce Departmentâs records. Comparable data only go back to 1992 because government economists reformulated their retail-sales figures earlier this decade, and didnât revise historical records beyond that year. Novemberâs decline was revised to 2.1 percent from a previously estimated fall of 1.8 percent. Restaurant Sales Todayâs report showed declines in 11 of the 13 major categories tracked by the government, led by a 16 percent plunge at gasoline service stations that partly reflected the slump in fuel costs. The drop at grocery stores was the biggest since April 2002 and the decrease at restaurants was the largest since the terrorist attacks in September 2001. Only health and beauty stores and a miscellaneous category saw increases last month. Purchases of expensive goods are falling as banks restrict access to credit. Auto sales fell 36 percent in December from the same month last year, capping the industryâs worst year since 1992. Same-store sales dropped 2.2 percent in the last two months of 2008, making it the worst holiday shopping season in almost four decades of record keeping, the International Council of Shopping Centers said last week. The first half of this year will also be âextraordinarily challenging,â Wal-Mart Chief Executive Officer H. Lee Scott told a retailersâ convention this week in New York City. âSome people are giving up eating out; some people are giving up movies; some people are giving up other things like shopping,â Scott said. âThose are fundamental changes that will continue.â 16-Year High Americans are scrimping as unemployment last month rose to 7.2 percent, the highest level in almost 16 years. Job losses are likely to continue for most of this year, economists said. The plunge at filling stations in part reflected a 43 cent- per-gallon drop in the average cost of gasoline last month. Excluding gas, retail sales fell 1.4 percent. The U.S. economy shrank at a 0.5 percent annual pace from July through September as Americans reduced purchases at a 3.8 percent annual rate, the first decline in consumer spending since 1991 and the biggest in 28 years, the government said last month. The economic slump probably worsened in the fourth quarter as declines in business investment and construction intensified and consumers continued to pull back. Excluding autos, gasoline and building materials, the retail group the government uses to calculate gross domestic product figures for consumer spending, sales dropped 1.4 percent, after a 0.1 percent increase in the prior month. The government uses data from other sources to calculate the contribution from the three categories excluded.
Re inventory levels at our WMT supercenter. I bought the last tub of I can't belive its not butter, they were out of hot dog buns. Two days before they were out of the Pepsi I wanted. They redesigned their paper back section, they have 4 books on Obama but the selection of everything else is ca ca. I bought one book in the last 18 months from wall mart, before the re design (or censorship) I used to buy one a month. All the shelves needed to be restocked, it looks ridiculous to have 16 inch shelves two miles long, half empty. They pulled out the vending machines that sell soda in the lobby and replaced these with more trash cans for the bottle redemptions. Really appealing.
bfft this is all nonsense. The only restaturants that matter are fast food joints, which are seeing record revenue becuase people are merely shifting purchasing dollars from expensive casual dining to fast food. The economy has hardly shrunk at all, and this doom and gloom is unwarrented.