This was an unequivocal disaster. All the hype. All the deals. All the advertising. All the extra hours. And sales PLUMMET by 11% versus a shitty Black Friday weekend last year. You will see bullshit excuses like on-line sales surging. Well here is the deal. Annual retail sales are about $5 trillion. On-line sales are less than $500 billion. If bricks and mortar sales decline by 11% and on-line sales go up by 20%, total sales still decline by 8%.
Black Friday is so named because it was when retailers would go into the black (profitable). It looks like this was a Red weekend. This will be the holiday season where the marginal retailers will begin to fall by the wayside. RadioShack will declare bankruptcy. Sears and JC Penney will lose hundreds of millions.
The economic recovery storyline is complete and utter bullshit. The average American can barely pay their monthly bills. If the storyline was true, there is no way retail sales would be collapsing year over year. Oil prices are deflating. Consumer spending is deflating. Wages are deflating. Global commerce is deflating. The central banks have pumped out more fiat in the last five years than had been created in world history, and their grand experiment has failed.
The shit is hitting the fan and the willfully ignorant masses don’t have a clue. The mood in the country is darkening. The mass media will keep peddling propaganda and falsity right until the end. It’s their job.
Holiday weekend sales fall 11%: NRF
By Shelly Banjo
Published: Nov 30, 2014 2:56 p.m. ET
Retail spending over the Thanksgiving weekend fell 11%, its second straight annual decline, according to the main industry trade group, a sign that flashy discounts during the four-day shopping bonanza weren’t enough to prompt increased sales.
Total spending from Thursday through Sunday sank 11% from a year earlier to $50.9 billion, according to the National Retail Federation. Shoppers spent an average $380.95, down 6.4% from $407.02 a year earlier.
NRF CEO Matt Shay attributed the drop to a combination of factors, including the fact that retailers moved promotions earlier this year in attempt to get people out sooner and avoid what happened last year when people didn’t finish their shopping because of bad weather.
He also attributed the declines to better online offerings and an improving economy where “people don’t feel the same psychological need to rush out and get the great deal that weekend, particularly if they expected to be more deals.”
