It's up by 3%. The economy must be a little better than we've heard if people are out spending anything:
The holiday shopping season got off to a surprisingly solid start, according to data released Saturday by a research firm. But the sales boost during the post-Thanksgiving shopathon came at the expense of profits as the nation's retailers had to slash prices to attract the crowds in a season that is expected to be the weakest in decades.What the heck? They slash prices every year and year the prices weren't that great I checked. Maybe if you wanted a TV and cheap PJs or saving some money on an iPod touch but other than that it was the same price cuts as last year ($500 laptops, digital cameras for under $100, etc.)Sales during the day after Thanksgiving rose 3 percent to $10.6 billion, according to preliminary figures released Saturday by ShopperTrak RCT Corp., a Chicago-based research firm that tracks sales at more than 50,000 retail outlets. Last year, shoppers spent about $10.3 billion on the day after Thanksgiving, dubbed Black Friday because it was historically the sales-packed day when retailers would become profitable for the year.
[...]
Across the country, sales in the South were up 3.4 percent from last year while they climbed 2.6 percent in the Northeast as shoppers began scouring store aisles at midnight hoping to snag the best selection on early morning specials, some as much as 70 percent off. Elsewhere, sales rose 3 percent in the Midwest and 2.7 percent in the West.
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must be a little better than we've heard if people are out spending anything:
Yeah, right.
Although my husband told me he ordered that flat screen TV we've been talking about ...
whomever sold the nation a bill of goods that said unlimited growth was a sustainable economic model should be tied up and pelted with past-due notices.
When did "profit" at the expense of the ability of the nation to stay "above water" become an inalienable right? Corporations created this mess by doing everything they could to bankrupt us and loot the treasure of our once-great nation, all in the name of profitability. I will not lose sleep that they "only grew 3% over last year."
Obviously the world is not coming to an end and all the talk about a new Depression is as silly as talk of "peak oil."
Life goes on.
I skimmed the article and they are talking absolute dollars, not constant dollars. Inflation has been all over the map for the past year. However, a 3% rise in the dollar figure is likely to be a decline in sales using constant dollars.
I agree the economy is soft, but we're not at the edge of the Apocalypse like some people are claiming.
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