Pedro Picasso withholding his cheering

[franksolich]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=4163176&mesg_id=4163183

Oh my.

TomCADem  (1000+ posts)       Sat Nov-28-09 02:19 PM
Original message

Early holiday shopping has merchants optimistic

The nation's merchants -- both in stores and online -- appeared pleased with the first results from the holiday shopping weekend that was kicked off in the predawn darkness of Black Friday and continued early Saturday.

Taubman Centers -- which operates such malls as the Woodfield Mall in Schaumburg, Ill., and the Stamford Town Center in Connecticut -- said a majority of its centers reported year-over-year sales increases Friday, with steady traffic into the evening hours.

"The hot categories throughout the evening included apparel, electronics, shoes and boots, and bath and beauty predominantly," said Karen Mac Donald, Taubman's communications director, in an e-mail.

J.C. Penney said Saturday that sales were strong at stores across the country on Black Friday. Top sellers included gemstone and gold jewelry, luggage sets, women's cashmere-blend pea coats and a device that projects TV images onto a blank wall.

Read more: http://money.cnn.com/2009/11/28/news/economy/holiday_sh... /

Pedro Picasso:

Atman  (1000+ posts)        Sat Nov-28-09 02:29 PM
Response to Original message
 
1. Ah, the annual "GOOD NEWS! GO SHOPPING!" bullshit press-releases begin

In this case, a mall owner is saying all is well, come shopping. Forgive me I withhold my cheering until after the downward-revised reports come out in a week or two.

bitchkitty (1000+ posts)      Sat Nov-28-09 02:31 PM
Response to Reply #1
 
2. I live next to a shopping center with Borders, Bed Bath Beyond, Ulta 3, Ann Taylor, stores like that. Yesterday they were crowded, but it wasn't crowded for black Friday.

hobbit709  (1000+ posts)      Sat Nov-28-09 03:46 PM
Response to Reply #1
 
5. Yep. We've seen this story before.

Doug's stupid ex-wife:

EFerrari  (1000+ posts)        Sat Nov-28-09 03:55 PM
Response to Reply #1
 
6. Monday. 

I'm right there with you. It's going to be really ugly, imho.

fascisthunter  (1000+ posts)      Sat Nov-28-09 04:00 PM
Response to Reply #1
 
7. all is well as long as they make money the World could fall apart around them, and they still focus on on aspect of life itself. Making someone above them richer and hoper they go along for that ride and benefit. It really is pathetic, hopefully more and more folks will snap out of it.

unabelladonna (23 posts)      Sat Nov-28-09 06:10 PM
Response to Reply #7
 
12. unfortunately, the mind numbed robots have been programmed to feel guilty if their offspring doesn't get the $100 toy he/she so deserves. this is the most consumer oriented country in the world. our economy isn't based on "making" things it's geared around selling things made elsewhere to ourselves. the only employment to be found is low paying retail...sad.

timeforpeace (1000+ posts)      Sat Nov-28-09 02:40 PM
Response to Original message
 
3. Never saw a post-Black Friday news article that reported bad sales.

Sherman A1  (1000+ posts)        Sat Nov-28-09 07:05 PM
Response to Reply #3
 
14. I saw one today on the front page of the local paper

Bonhomme Richard  (1000+ posts)      Sat Nov-28-09 03:29 PM
Response to Original message
 
4. Crazy. I found out the upscale mall my son works at charges....

for parking. And the bitch is that they charge mall employees $9.00/day for parking. The greed amazes me.

Must be that one really big shopping-mall company that's a blue corporation.

Simon's, or something like that.

onethatcares  (1000+ posts)      Sat Nov-28-09 04:20 PM
Response to Original message

8. are they putting it on the plastic or paying cash?

if it's the plastic, we're gonna see a whole lot more defaulting credit card holders next year, or we're gonna see a bunch of happy credit card issuers raising rates to 28.99 per cent.

If it's cash, why are people going hungry?

This is Bo's America now.  Nobody's going hungry in Bo's America.

The careless primitive needs to get in step with the program.

The Allentown dude primitive:

AllentownJake  (1000+ posts)        Sat Nov-28-09 05:09 PM
Response to Original message
 
9. No one will know what is going on till after Christmas

Stores never report bad news during Christmas.

The Twix candy bar primitive, who's upset with us:

TwixVoy  (1000+ posts)        Sat Nov-28-09 05:31 PM
Response to Reply #9
 
10. Yup when I was in Target management back in Q4 2008 the media was reporting all was going well.... yet when I checked our national sales numbers every day at work they were falling off a cliff.

Too bad I don't have access to that information anymore. Would be VERY interesting to see.

AllentownJake  (1000+ posts)        Sat Nov-28-09 05:34 PM
Response to Reply #10
 
11. It isn't good

Drove around today, malls looked normal, could find parking, both in Allentown and the Poconos. Traffic was no different by the outlets than it is any weekend I visit my brother.

jwirr  (1000+ posts)      Sat Nov-28-09 06:26 PM
Response to Original message
 
13. Shouldn't jump to conclusions. The people I know who went shopping took all the money they had saved for practical Christmas gifts and went shopping on this day but they are now done shopping. It was the only day they can afford to shop so the stores can forget them coming back.

[GOBUCKS]

TwixVoy  (1000+ posts)        Sat Nov-28-09 05:31 PM
10. Yup when I was in Target management back in Q4 2008 the media was reporting all was going well.... yet when I checked our national sales numbers every day at work they were falling off a cliff.

Too bad I don't have access to that information anymore. Would be VERY interesting to see.

Even though DUmmy TwixVoy was "in Target management" (checkout clerk in the 10-items-or-less line), he isn't aware that Target, as a public corporation, reports its results in great detail every quarter:

"In the fourth quarter of 2008, Target earned $609 million, or 81 cents per diluted share.

For the first three quarters of 2009, Target earnings were down 3.3 percent to $1.55 billion, compared with $1.60 billion in the first three quarters of 2008. Sales for the first three quarters were down 0.3 percent, to 43.7 billion from 43.9 billion in the year-ago period."

Sales decline 0.3%. Yep, falling off a cliff. Actually, not too bad, despite the best efforts of the jug-eared muslim to destroy business.

[jukin]

And now for some reality.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_holiday_shopping

Sales post meager 0.5% increase on black friday. That Does not even keep up with population growth of 1%+. 

This growth was from the terrible and panic/crisis/sky falling numbers of 2008.