It will be interesting to see what sort of retail numbers come out for this bellwether weekend, and further, whether they can be sustained. Against the current economic backdrop, poorer than expected holiday sales would be really bad news. Currently, Bloomberg is reporting that holiday spending appears to be up slightly (it would be interesting to find out what proportion of the holiday spend is being put on consumer credit cards).
I wouldn’t know. I stayed very clear of all shopping venues yesterday, bringing my YTD holiday spending total to $0. And I plan on cashing in airline miles for about $500 worth of Macy’s gift cards. This means that if you’re on my Christmas list, you’re either getting something from Macy’s, or you’re getting a gift card to Macy’s.
Today on my way home from the annual reunion football game with my high school friends, I drove past the mall. (For those keeping score at home, my team lost although I did score three touchdowns.) If there is a recession going on, it’s apparently not happening anywhere near the Somerset Collection mall. The overflow parking lot—previously the expansive parking lot for K-Mart’s former headquarters in Troy, Michigan—was completely full and the mall was running a shuttle to and from. The parking lot at the nearby Target store was also full, and traffic seemed slightly heavier than I would’ve expected on a holiday weekend.
Since one-in-five Michigan residents are out of work, I’m curious to know what’s financing all of this spending. Everywhere I look, people don’t have money. They don’t have jobs. They’re losing their houses to foreclosure. They’re defaulting on credit cards, or behind on payments, etc.
My unsubstantiated guess, is that people are just maxing out their credit cards to make holiday purchases this year.
And that’s not good news.
I’m halfway into a 3 month social research experiment with the largest retail establishment in the supposedly free world. And its been quite a disgusting education so far. I witnessed all of black friday first hand and I never saw such a pack of gushing savages. I’m not kidding one bit, all of it was a sight to behold. Having lived in the woods for the past several years has deprived me of the advances in the social structure in the US and in essence what I have done was to *Time Tunnel* from the early 18th century to the 21st century in one stride in one day and it will take some time to fully digest this spectacle. To be blunt, I am surrounded by frothing animals disguised as humans. Indeed, this whole thing needs to come crashing down. I’m not a spiritual person but Gaia needs to slough this virus.
In some ways, I see it as a WORSE sign for the economy that people are so hell bent for savings on Black Friday — if people were flush with money, a lot of them would probably just say the hell with the crowds, even though it meant missing out on the sales. The fact that sales are UP would seem to indicate more people are desperate to make their money go as far as possible, even if it means braving the insanity that is black friday.
I could be wrong, but seems to me that if sales are down the rest of the year, but up on black friday, that’s an indicator in and of itself.
Consumerism is (unfortunately) still alive and well in the States — but you have to be a lot more tactical about sales if you want your money to go as far as in years past.