ALT-1 The Trials of the World of Retail
Just before Christmas, MasterCard released their findings on holiday period spending for this year. They reported that spending from Thanksgiving to Christmas increased "a mere" 3.6 percent over last year. MasterCard Advisors, the promotional services arm of MasterCard, reported that this increase is the weakest performance in at least four years. In the same yearly periods by comparison, sales grew 6.6 percent in 2006 and 8.7 percent in 2005.
It would seem that you just couldn't make retailers happy if you spent your life away. That would be about right. Expectations are always for increase of dollars spent as if the devalued dollars spent really has any magic in today's "global economy". This traditional measuring stick employed by MasterCard Advisors is outdated at best. The traditional dogma is that most retailers don't begin to see their profits until about Thanksgiving every year. Bull cookies. If most real business operated in such a way, they would be out of business in short order. Even the cheap and slave labor that create their products overseas can't make them happy or profitable enough for their shareholders. Consider this dogma as nothing but a distortion of the truth.
Not to be ignored is the currently devalued dollar and an inflation rate of around 3% yearly willingly admitted by government statistics, largely as a result of the policies of the Fed and the printing of federal reserve notes. When you consider these factors alone, Christmas sales were actually almost flat from last year. Big retailers should be concerned about the realities of the "global economy". They cannot continue to bleed the United States in the way they have in the past because business is sending so many jobs overseas and wealth along with those jobs. Instead, they need to be running reports on China, India or Saudi Arabia because of all the U.S. dollars that flow through those fountains. Of course, they can't measure these countries because of the politics and lifestyles, at least not yet. Because of corporate oligarchy that has become the rule of the day, the venerable United States is fast becoming a third-world agency in the fish pond of the global economy.
In the meantime, the expectations of retailers and business continue to be out of line as corporate business and the bankers continue to cannibalize the United States economy to enrich themselves. Money must come from somewhere in good times and bad, during abundance and credit crunch. Corporate business will be quickly learning that their cannibalism makes increasing retail sales in the United States more unlikely. Retail sales agencies should be questioning the validity of their retail sales measuring sticks. The corporate oligarchy must realize that their favorite cash cow no longer has the vitality it once enjoyed. The oligarchy role in outsourcing has had a role in that lack of vitality. It is entirely possible that they are sowing the seeds of their own self-destruction in the name of greed.
