Black Friday sales were up 3% from last year, but we’re in Great Depression 2.0. I don’t get it. More important than what MSNBC says, what do you think? How would you describe the state of the economy? You can leave your responses below:
Our SlaterRaider responses this morning:
6:00 Hour
Faltering
Guarded
Fair
Cyclical
Not as bad as they say it is
Gonna get better
Little worse than people want to admit
Living on borrowed time
Turn the media off
7:00 Hour
Pretty bad
Okay right now
House of cards
Uncertain
All right
8:00
Greed
Cruise control
On a good climb
Primed
Professor Mark Perry (Author of my favorite blog. Seriously, it’s incredible):
Isn’t it interesting how the media reported the 3% increase in Black Friday sales? It got variously described as “consumers thumbing their noses at a bad economy,” the “smallest gain in three years,” “positive for merchants,” and “lukewarm.”Since we’re supposedly in the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, it’s suprising that Black Friday sales are up at all, and surprising that sales are expected to increase by 2.2% in 2008 (Now at 3%), close behind the 2.4% last year when the economy supposedly was not on the verge of falling into the Great Depression (see table above)? What gives? Shouldn’t any increase be considered good news?
It’s as if the news is full of floods but we haven’t seen it rain.
Anyway it is odd, surreal, to have the steady downbeat of Great Depression II all over the news, and few signs of GDII on the street, odd that the news we’re hearing is at odds with what our eyes are seeing, at least at the moment.
6:30 segment:
8:30 segment:
