Maryland Conservatarian

The Home Page at washingtonpost.com: • Holiday Retail Sales Are Low

Front page of the Business Section: Stores Report Holiday Season Of Letdowns

…and here’s the bad news: Same store sales for December are only UP 3.1% as compared to last December. (Retailers were hoping for more.) Obviously, the Bush economy is tanking!

But then we learn later in the article that sales don’t include gift cards (which I both gave and gratefully received) and:

“Catalogue sales were not counted in the tally, and neither was online shopping, which was bountiful, reaching $24.6 billion in November and December, according to ComScore Networks, a market research firm. That was a 26 percent increase over 2005..”


Finally:

“Several big players did not report December sales results yesterday, including Circuit City and Best Buy, which both had long lines and some of the season's hottest items.”

I’m not sure people in the Depression-era ever had it this bad.