Reuters - "America's retailers face the prospect of a grim festive season as a toxic cocktail of high gas and food prices, the worst housing crisis since the Great Depression and financial turmoil on Wall Street look set to hurt holiday sales". The popular press will begin to cover this issue in about 2 weeks.
America has been overstored for years. Distribution networks have gotten to the point where they take the exact same item, and give it three different price points - one for the low end, one for the middle end, and one for the high end - but its the exact same product. Fine when you are lazy and have money to burn. Not so fine now. Retailers have been more concerned about marketing and expansion of number of stores to create market share. Now, they might actually need to pay attention to merchandise and price points for a change, but that will take a while. Grim q4 indeed.
When you think of it, buying gifts for people on xmas doesn't make any sense. What in the world does gift giving have to do with the birth of Jesus, assuming of course he even existed? Xmas and all other holidays have just been turned into a day for the retailers to pick your pockets having you buy useless items.
Tightening credit may produce a vicious cycle in the months ahead. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aTVEGdCJauGI&refer=home
The question isn't "did He even exist?"...the question is "what do you do about the fact that He came to earth?" There is more historical fact that He came to earth than George Washington existed!