fayfreethinkers.com

Here is a sign of how shaky the economy is becoming: Wal-Mart says its shoppers are redeeming their holiday gift cards for basic items — pasta sauce, diapers, laundry detergent — rather than iPods and DVDs.

Retail Sales Merchants had hoped that shoppers with gift cards would provide a lift after a slack holiday season, partly because they tend to spend more than the value of the card. But that did not seem to happen last month, and retailers are feeling the pain.

On Thursday, the nation’s retailers turned in their worst January in almost four decades as high gasoline and food prices, the slumping housing market, tighter credit and tougher job prospects pushed some consumers to the edge.

Sales at 43 retailers surveyed by the UBS-International Council of Shopping Centers rose just 0.5 percent in January, well below a forecast of 1.5 percent.

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The only reason the powers that be have any claim whatsoever that we are not in recession is that their inflation index doesn't include food or fuel. The current administration has created and is in the process of (I think deliberately) making worse a very nasty economic situation to hand the next president, who will either have to blow off her/his campaign agenda or seriously raise taxes or both. The Rs see this as a replay of 1992, thinking they can get congress back, if not the White House, by 2010 by giving the incoming (probably) Democratic president and congress a real nasty recession, debt, and deficit.