The weak trade shipping mentioned in the last post indicates that manufacturers have cut orders significantly not only for XMAS sales but also for all items into Q1 2009.

It is the sale of items that drives the economy. Lower sales is going to result in cascading job losses across many industries, not just retail.

Here’s a link to monitor:
Techcrunch layoff tracker

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I agree with one of the above posters, the numbers seem pulled out of thin air. Also the numbers do not match what one would get number-crunching the info quoted in the article. To quote the article:

QUOTE: Almost a quarter of shoppers say banks cut the spending limits on their credit cards…

QUOTE: About two-thirds of holiday purchases are made using credit cards….

Let’s see now, 0.25 x 0.67 = 0.1675 for a decline of 16.75%. But of course some people could still pay cash even if they have their credit cards taken away.

And that is just this year. What about Christmas 2009 when the credit situation may be even tighter?

In my opinion the best case is a multi-year “Lost Decade” situation. We will be lucky to have 0% GDP change the next several years, as opposed to a slow economic decline, losing a small percent of GDP per year.

Sincerely,
Phil D.

That’s what they said about Mount St Helens, Mount Vesuvius, Mount Krakatau, Mount Pelee and credit swaps, derivatives and Beanie Babies.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQqZU14kgOg

First off, this Disney-ized song REALLY sucks and thus, it represents the commercialization and exploitation of consumerism, so you get what you pay for here as a free, discardable or disposable symbol of what meaningless global capitalism represents.

Nonetheless, Cindy-Lou Who (who was only two) in the original cartoon, is the hopeful bright eyed kid that wakes up to find The Grinch stealing everything in her home, yet Cindy, offers to aid and abet:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tjqq3ElVYlg

Unfortunately, do the limitations of The LHC, there is no sound in that clip ( we are at the mercy of technology) but this is a multi-media metaphor, and I’m not sure yet as to how sound fits in with metaphorical abstractions, but … I digress…

Cindy, represents the average global worker, the investor, the person that has no clue what is going on with money, yet, as a deer in the headlights, these innocent sheep aid and abet wall street. These lemmings apparently wake every morning (from the coma they are in) with the hope that today will be an even better day at the shopping mall and that something will be on sale for XMAS, and then they pull out the credit cards and say yes to more — just as The Grinch said more, to poor Max, the slave dog that had to bear the burden of the real load.

I realize this is a difficult moment to connect Max to the reality of future debt burdens and the edge of the cliff which the capitalist sleigh glides upon, but please, next time you shop for something stupid, think of Max and not Cindy!

I know that most of this post doesn’t make the right point, but thank God we have people here that have it more together than me! My mind is elsewhere, but I just wanted to tap into The Christmas Spirit…

But the Americans are really undergoing cognitive dissonance with respect to their latest predictions, which is causing them to be remarkably inaccurate.

I haven’t seen so many predictions that are so widely accepted be so far off the mark since Milton Friedman toured the country from July 1982 to March 1983 terrifying audiences with his predictions of imminent hyperinflation, which never came. It’s been 25 years now….I wonder if that M1B bulge in 1982 is going to come back to haunt us….

Did this decrease the faith of American in the myth of Friedman?

Of course not.

Inflation is an article of religious faith to American commentators.

Matt

I agree. The Grinch is coming for Christmas.

Americans just don’t seem to understand what is in store for them.

Matt Dubuque