Courtesy of: Visual Capitalist
Continue reading “The Extraordinary Size of Amazon in One Chart”
Tag: bricks and mortar
SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES
I stopped trying to predict markets back in 2008 when the Federal Reserve, Treasury Department, Wall Street bankers, and their propaganda peddling media mouthpieces colluded to rig the markets to benefit the elite establishment players while screwing average Americans. I haven’t owned any stocks to speak of since 2006. I missed the the final blow-off, the 50% crash, and the subsequent engineered new bubble. But that doesn’t stop me from assessing our true economic situation, market valuations, and historical comparisons in order to prove the irrationality and idiocy of the current narrative.
The proof of this market being rigged and not based upon valuations, corporate earnings, discounted cash flows, or anything related to free market capitalism, was the reaction to Trump’s upset victory. The narrative was status quo Hillary was good for markets and Trump’s anti-establishment rhetoric would unnerve the markets. When the Dow futures plummeted by 800 points on election night, left wingers like Krugman cackled and predicted imminent collapse. The collapse lasted about 30 minutes, as the Dow recovered all 800 points and has subsequently advanced another 1,500 points since election day. Krugman’s predictive abilities proven stellar once again.
BRICKS & MORTAR RETAILING CRUMBLING
Anyone who thinks J.C. Penney, Sears, Best Buy, or Radio Shack just need to make a few tweaks and everything will return to normal probably believed Bernanke in 2005 when he said the housing market was not a bubble. Retail CEOs and their humungous egos refuse to acknowledge that their business concept is dying. Building new stores in this economy is like putting a gun to your head and pulling the trigger. All of these bricks and mortar retailers who are now going full speed into on-line retailing are cannibalizing their existing mall based stores. These are not incremental sales.
As gas prices shockingly rise again in 2013 and real wages shockingly decline again and two million more people shockingly leave the work force, and the MSM idiots conclude that the economy shockingly went back into recession, consumers will shockingly spend less money in the dying bricks and mortar retailers. Online sales will probably continue to grow, just as it has for the last two decades.
Retail CEOs will be forced to acknowledge that their thousands of physical stores are growing obsolete and dragging them towards bankruptcy. The announced “restructurings” will result in thousands more vacant hulking shells in more dying malls. It already looks like SPACE AVAILABLE is the hottest retailer in America. Mall developers will be defaulting on their loans, but the Wall Street banks will just “restructure” the loans so they don’t have to write them off. Who needs principal and interest payments when you have accountants and 0% loans from the Fed?
The next time you see a Wall Street shyster recommending Sears stock and talking about the brilliance of Eddie Lampert (aka the next Warren Buffett), remember this chart. Lampert has run this joke of a retailer into the ground. The Wall Street scum touted Sears as an asset play, with thousands of valuable real estate locations. Hysterical. Who exactly is Lampert going to sell these mall locations to? Best Buy? JC Penney? Target?
The demise of bricks and mortar retailers will be a slow motion train wreck. It already started in 2008 and will pick up steam in 2013.