The Christmas Retail Death March

exerpt;

Doug McIntosh
Nov 4 2008

The consumer retail spending collapse continues unabated. The effects of this spending implosion are speeding up. It is truly the end of American retail as we know it. I am afraid the days of physical retail, strip malls, standalone stores and the like are fading away into economic insignificance. Not that they will disappear into the ether completely, but merely they will became less and less important. The process will continue as the Internet sucks off more retail spending. We are looking at the physical reduction of American retail by one third: in employees, retail chains and store numbers and in commercial real estate occupied by retail outlets.

The year 2008 has resembled the retail version of the Bataan Death march. Retail chain after retail chain has crawled off into the bush to die, after being beaten senseless by consumers lack of spending.
The Circuit City retail chain is just another in a long line of drop outs. CompUSA, Shoe Pavilion, Sharper Image, Wickes Furniture are just a few of the rotting retail corpses. Month after month the retail slaughter continues. Month after month the stock markets ignore the true economic reality and are manipulated into fake rallies by the Plunge Protection Team. It no longer matters. The underlying economic realities are so grim I am afraid the NWO whore Paulson and his boy toy Neel are being overwhelmed.
Hank's famous "it is contained" quote will go down in economic history as one of the biggest phrases of economic bravo sierra since Irving Fisher's 1929, "permanent stock plateau" one. It is not contained, nor can it be contained Hank.


....................For now, I will just bluntly tell you, the USA has seen nothing yet in terms of what is coming down the pike in the negative economic sense.
I realize, after 10 months of economic chaos in 2008, that may seem a strange statement. It is not. For the first time in decades the USA is going to have a deeply negative Christmas retail season. As in a non season. Since we have been in a retail spending collapse for all year; since we have seen retail store and chain closings at a truly stunning level, it is obvious 2009 will be when it all comes together. One of the reasons I can tell the Christmas retail season is not going to happen is Christmas cards are 25% off three weeks before Thanksgiving.
Bad sign that one is.
All the retail chains that have limped along the retail death march all year in the vain hope they would make their usual 35% of total profits in the next two months will do the drop and die. Around Valentine's Day 2009 it will be amazingly clear the extent of the retail carnage.
The result of that clarity will be mass employee layoffs, mass chain and store closings and mass vacant commercial real estate. All of this happening from January 15th to February 15th. Circuit City just closed 155 stores and is leaving 12 markets. Sony reportedly ordered the trucks carrying their electronics to Circuit City to turn around mid delivery. The tip of the iceberg. There is no money to be had by consumers. There is no credit to be lent by retailers or banks. We will have a non Christmas season. The new year will show the retail results. Circuit City is not the beginning, nor is it the end. Circuit City is the middle.
Whatever NWO hack is anointed to lead the USA, he will find the mother of all economic crisis' in the spring of 2009. After all, that is the way the NWO planned it.
If there is one thing I have learned watching the NWO, they do have a plan, an agenda and a persistent cunning to implement that agenda.
By March of 2009 it will be clear what that agenda is. So now you see why the NWO wants our Afro Commie Ubanga as anointed Messiah doing his FDR thing next spring.