Enough about Joe the Plumber.
Let's talk Christmas. Or Hannukah. Or Kwanzaa. Or whatever holiday you happen to celebrate in December. The point is - I'm pretty certain the upcoming spending season has already crossed your mind as you watch the Dow dive on nearly a daily basis.
And even if you haven't given the holidays much thought yet - you can bet worried retailers have. New figures out yesterday show that the bottom fell out of retail sales last month.."their longest slump in at least 16 years," according to Bloomberg.
Numerous stores have already decked the halls and launched the deals they hope will save their bottom line from the Economic Crises Grinch. It's already been a horrible year, with a number of the nation's most familiar stores in bankruptcy, as you can see on the NBC Nightly News. And as USA Today reports, because the holiday season brings stores most if not all of their annual profits, it's "likely to be a make-or-break one for many small retailers and those that were struggling before the economy's dramatic slide."
All the trees and tinsel - which are already up in some stores in an attempt to spur spending - can't cover up the panic. Shoppers will notice less inventory on the shelves and fewer sales people on the floor. Conversely, stores will undoubtedly be seeing fewer shoppers.
According to USA Today, a recent survey of 1,000 Wal-Mart shoppers found that "39% indicated they will shop earlier and make other changes to help stretch their holiday cash, 39% said they plan to buy less-expensive items, and 35% said they planned to buy gifts for fewer people."
And while this is really a bad time to be selling cars, electronics, and cashmere sweaters ---- it's apparently a great time to be selling toys. As The Hackensack Record reported recently, "executives from the country's top toy companies were as giddy as kids in a toy store as they gathered for an industry holiday preview in Manhattan, saying they believe they have strong products and a level of consumer demand that is recession-resistant."
So while higher gas prices and lower spending are expected to impact sales this holiday season -- toy bosses believe mom and dad are more likely to buy something for the kids rather than for each other. Wal-Mart is making that bet, too, by luring parents into stores now by cutting prices on popular toys, as is Toy R Us, which sent me this eFlyer last night.
"Given current conditions, some (shoppers) need to spread out their Christmas shopping over a longer time-frame than they may have last year," Wal-Mart spokeswoman Linda Blakely tells Reuters.
I feel bad for all the businesses and in turn, all their employees, that probably won't survive much past this holiday season. It won't
be good overall for the economy - and bodes poorly for a recovery in the near-future.
But let's take a step back from the economic precipice for just a moment, and ask a question: would it really be such a bad thing to have fewer gifts under the tree this year? Haven't we all complained over the years how the holidays have grown too materialistic?
The Grinch may steal our Christmas this year, but we can always look to Linus to remind us what the holiday season is really all about in the first place. And that's even something Joe the Plumber could probably get behind.
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