{"id":57027,"date":"2009-12-01T09:11:00","date_gmt":"2009-12-01T14:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/recovery-are-you-kidding-me-us-consumer-is-dramatically-worse-2009-12"},"modified":"2009-12-01T09:11:00","modified_gmt":"2009-12-01T14:11:00","slug":"recovery-are-you-kidding-me-us-consumer-is-a-disaster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/57027","title":{"rendered":"Recovery?  ARE YOU KIDDING ME??  US Consumer Is A Disaster"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n<object width=\"584\" height=\"432\"><embed type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" width=\"584\" height=\"432\" src=\"http:\/\/cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com\/up\/fop\/embedflv\/swf\/fop_wrapper.swf?id=16899714&amp;autoStart=0&amp;prepanelEnable=1&amp;infopanelEnable=1&amp;carouselEnable=0\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\"><\/embed><\/object>\n<\/p>\n<p>According to the National Retail Federation, <a href=\"http:\/\/finance.yahoo.com\/tech-ticker\/article\/380823\/Black-Friday-Shopping-They-Came-But-Spent-Less?tickers=wmt,tgt,rth,dia,spy,jwn,m&amp;sec=topStories&amp;pos=9&amp;asset=&amp;ccode=\">retail sales over the Thanksgiving holiday <\/a>weekend were $41.2 billion, up slightly from a year ago, while about 195 million consumers shopped, up from 172 million last year.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, <a href=\"http:\/\/ecreditdaily.com\/2009\/11\/report-online-sales-average-surged-35-percent-black-friday-article375\/\">Coremetrics says<\/a> the average online shopper spent 35% more on Black Friday vs. a year ago, while robust sales were predicted for Cyber Monday.<\/p>\n<p>Against that backdrop, you might expect Howard Davidowitz of Davidowitz &amp; Associates to backtrack from some of <a href=\"http:\/\/search.yahoo.com\/search?fr=yfp-t-701-s&amp;toggle=1&amp;cop=mss&amp;ei=UTF8&amp;rd=r2&amp;p=tech%20ticker%20davidowitz\">the bearishness he&#8217;s professed on Tech Ticker<\/a> (and elsewhere) in the past year. But you&#8217;d be wrong.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The consumer is in worse shape since I was here last&#8221; in August, Davidowitz says, citing the following:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Unemployment has exploded:<\/strong> &#8220;We&#8217;ve lost a ton of jobs since I was here last,&#8221; Davidowitz says, noting the &#8220;real&#8221; unemployment rate is 17.5%. &#8220;That&#8217;s an astounding number.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li><strong>Housing continues to sink:<\/strong> &#8220;The consumers&#8217; biggest asset is down trillions&#8221; in value while &#8220;foreclosures are exploding&#8221; and a huge percentage have negative equity &#8212; 23% according to CoreLogic.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Record numbers of consumer bankruptcies:<\/strong> The American consumer has &#8220;never been further behind&#8230;never defaulted more&#8221; on mortgages, student loans, auto loans, and credit card bills, he says.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Poverty on the Rise:<\/strong> One in eight Americans and one in four children are receiving food stamps, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/11\/29\/us\/29foodstamps.html?_r=1&amp;hp\">as The NYT reported<\/a> this weekend.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&#8220;A lot of people were out on Black Friday &#8212; you&#8217;re always going to spend some money because it&#8217;s Christmas,&#8221; he says. &#8220;[But] the consumer continues to get dramatically worse.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Davidowitz predicts &#8220;the noise will be taken out&#8221; about &#8220;strong&#8221; Black Friday sales in the coming weeks and a sobering reality will settle in: &#8220;People will look a stores closing and a rash of bankruptcies after Christmas. People will start to look at this and say &lsquo;wow, this is terrible,'&#8221; he says.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/recovery-are-you-kidding-me-us-consumer-is-dramatically-worse-2009-12#comments\">Join the conversation about this story &#187;<\/a><\/p>\n<p><b>See Also:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/arming-goldman-with-pistols-2009-11\">Goldmanites Buying Handguns To Protect Against Angry Public (GS)<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/morgan-stanley-here-comes-a-brutal-2010-2009-11\">Morgan Stanley: Here Comes A Brutal 2010<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/TheMoneyGame\/~4\/VmV_YPyTgEw\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>According to the National Retail Federation, retail sales over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend were $41.2 billion, up slightly from a year ago, while about 195 million consumers shopped, up from 172 million last year. Meanwhile, Coremetrics says the average online shopper spent 35% more on Black Friday vs. a year ago, while robust sales were [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57027"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57027\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}