PSoTD

Ouch, California.

As bad as it is with stores playing up Santa to push merchandise before Christmas, I find it even more abusive to see this Circuit City email advertisement this morning:

Did Santa Let You Down This Year?

Really, are stores going to try blame to move their stuff now?

For the unemployed.

Just how many middle class folks are going to take a stock or fund investment and sell in the next two weeks so they can get the loss applied to their taxes.

Eventually, that's what people do when they feel that their desires and needs are constantly deprived by those with moneyed access to government.

Just a reality check for businesses that seem to be focused on screwing the American customer.

They make a fine gift for the wannabe hippie blogger you know, but this video commercial is kinda creepy.

One of the things that seems to be going on is a review process by individuals in the economy as to what others are thinking or seeing in the economy, from their standpoint. Wednesday I met with a client, and he was curious as to how I assessed how the economy would impact our business. Short answer is that I expect the economy to be worse, and worse longer, than the six months after 9/11, but that it was a mixed result back in 01/02 since we do annual agreements, our customer base is looking to us to find them more cost-efficient mechanisms than they currently have, so we benefit from both continuing revenue obligations and the search for lower-cost results. On the other hand, those benefits won't mean much if we're in a full-fledged depression, so I have to admit I'm always leaning for the more rosy future.

This isn't much different than questions I ask friends of mine in other businesses, or questions I've been asked before in the past few months. I think American small business people are trying to determine a consensus outside of the news delivery systems, particularly the business news delivery systems, because those systems don't seem to understand or recognize big trends until they are already upon us. In addition, they aren't particularly located in our geography or socio-economic ranges, so there's a doubt of their understanding and a distrust of their motives on any news about the economy. In short, we're all kind of gauging each other to figure out what to believe, and weighing that more heavily than we have done in the past.

I swear, we're eventually going to call the time period from 1946 to 2008 "The Sixty Year Blip".

According to a September survey on consumer anxieties over higher fuel and food prices from the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University in Ames, 34 percent of respondents said that they were likely to raise more of their own vegetables. Another 37 percent said they were likely to can or freeze more of their food. The cousin to canning and freezing is the root cellar.

“I’ve been doing local food work for a long time,” said Rich Pirog, associate director of the Leopold Center, who conducted the study. “And I’m seeing an increase in articles in various sustainable ag newsletters about root cellaring.”

According to Bruce Butterfield, the research director for the National Gardening Association, a trade group, home food preservation typically increases in a rotten economy. In 2002, the close of the last mild recession, 29 million households bought supplies for freezing, drying, processing and canning. Last year that number stood at only 22 million — a figure Mr. Butterfield said he expects to rise rapidly.

On the other hand, Nassim Taleb is saying some pretty scary stuff about the economy, and it's believable. From Charlie Rose.

I wonder why some companies don't offer free sets of printed christmas cards as long as they can put in their product placement. A local business, even one with international reach such as Hershey, could probably include an attractive and clever coupon on the back of the card.

guess next week is when peak starts building for people going into places like the UPS Store to send packages for Christmas, but I think the one I go to daily has been staffed up considerably this week in anticipation of the regular holiday push, and when I've been in, the place has been empty, or near to it. Just another one of those signs of what kind of Christmas this is going to be for retail.

Sure, maybe the video conferencing industry is going to explode as organizations are looking to cut travel costs, but the convention/business hotel industry is going to get a major asskicking the next few years...

It seems to me that in light of this news:

The U.S. credit-card industry may pull back well over $2 trillion of lines over the next 18 months due to risk aversion and regulatory changes, leading to sharp declines in consumer spending, prominent banking analyst Meredith Whitney said.

I've thought about this idea a bit the past few years, haven't really sold myself on it or decided it was terrible, but I do think it's worth some government study.

Retailers and the American consumer have banded together to make today an embarrassing stop on the calendar. I will do what I can to teach our kids that getting up early on the day after Thanksgiving to go Christmas shopping for deals is not a "tradition" that is worthy of them.

Just another large electronics/stereo chain going out of business.

So, the power's off for the third hour of the eleven hours it will be off on Saturday, and I decide to take the kids to Circuit City. Not to buy, I tell them, just to look. I received a gift card last year for Circuit City for Christmas from my mother-in-law, which was great but I haven't used it. Some news show the other day was briefly covering the financial problems that Circuit City are suffering now, and the words "if you have a gift card at Circuit City, run, don't walk, to use it" from an analyst are still echoing in my head.

We enter the door and it's pretty clear that customers are outnumbered by the red shirted employees. Not only that, but it appears that Circuit City is trying to save money by primarily hiring oily-faced 16 year old boys. They are everywhere. Their training seems to consist of remembering the first directive: Ask if the customer needs help. It doesn't matter if the customer intentionally is avoiding eye contact, or walking away, or talking to his kids. No, check if they need help with something.

Lost in the checking is the caveat - ask once. Since we were "looking" we ended up wandering the entire store in about 20 minutes, which was about all of the red shirts I could take. It's bad enough that every red shirt is going to ask at least once. But during that time, I was asked by one particular clerk 4 times, in different places, whether I needed any help. I don't think this kid was trying to pester us, I just don't think he was taking the time to remember who he asked, and apparently I am nondescript. Perhaps I should have worn my Jason hockey mask. I bet he would have remembered me then.

I understand that Circuit City is having hard times, but the heavy handed approach they're using with their teen brigades is pretty uncomfortable and doesn't feel like a recipe for recovery. I did get some ideas of what to spend the gift card on - but I don't feel like rewarding Circuit City with unspent money. Spend the card and get out will be my focus. They should try to avoid that sentiment with a sales approach that is more comfortable to the customer.

I am in the midst of planning our family's vacation for 2009. Every odd year, my two brothers' and their families and our family get together for a big family vacation somewhere. It's a lot of fun, and we go to different places, but because we're scattered all over the country, it's rarely anything "local" for anyone. We like to rent a big house for a week so we can be together, and then do what we're going to do for the week.

It's a strange time in vacation rentals, I suspect. When I look at the web sites for larger house rentals, I see a lot of vacancy still at this point, which in the past I don't remember seeing as much. This makes sense as people are planning less "big" vacations until the economy's path becomes more clear. On the other hand, I don't see the prices for these rentals being lowered to reflect the change in market conditions. I suspect that's a "when" action as oppose to an "if" action on the part of the rental landlords.

I'm going to have to use up this gift card sometime this week, I think.

So what will they say to this news?

Ha ha ha, not so funny.

Try using the FinAid Calculator for College Costs and use their average one year public school cost of $17336, and figure out the difference between the costs of matriculating in four years, and the costs of matriculating in 14 years. For those of us with second graders, it's pretty depressing.

Based on how aggressively they sent mail to pitch credit cards to us, over and over and over and over and over and over again, I wonder just how bad the credit situation over at Capital One might be - I know I don't want to invest in it.

Forbes is a little late to this party. Marion, the home of my grandparents and where both my parents grew up, has been a vulnerable town for quite a while. Just seeing what has happened to my grandparents' old home shows me that. But Forbes, thanks for taking your attention away from :CueCat and looking around to notice if there are any real problems out there deserving some consideration!

Americans will move to them only if there's a clear economic reason to do so. They're just not buying new cars, period.

I better use my Circuit City gift card in case the local store closes...

My wife noticed the Linens 'n Things on Simpson Ferry Road in Camp Hill was going out of business, and wondered if it was just that store. Nope, all of them.

You outlast some of your vendors. Some that we've seen disappear, or swallowed, in the past:

Sir Speedy printers
PA State Bank
epix
Mail Boxes Etc.
OneMain.com
PCS One
Velocity Networks

I do not understand why financial institutions believe it should cost over $30 to stop payment on a check.

The restaurant sector...

Families are increasingly foregoing restaurant meals, opting to pick up prepared meals at grocery stores or buying the ingredients to cook meals at home. In a recent national survey of 1,500 people, Mintel found that 57 percent were dining out less frequently. Of those, 63 percent said they were cutting back on meals at mid-priced casual-dining restaurants (the category that includes places such as Applebee's and Coco's), 58 percent at upscale "white tablecloth" restaurants, and 53 percent at fast-food restaurants.

One of the things I noticed in the parking lot, in the shopping cart pickup area, and in the store at large was that I was in the minority of folks that were using the large shopping carts. Most everyone was using the small shopping carts, even folks carrying around kids with them. I've noticed that the carts in the storage area, from week to week, seemed to be getting a growing ratio of smaller carts to larger carts, but didn't think too much of it as I walked past the small cart rows.

But after seeing families shopping with the smaller carts, I think I'm getting it. There's a lot at play here - smaller packaging, more expensive food, and the need to shop around for the best deals. So people are probably doing all their grocery purchasing in one stop for the week less than they did in the past, and they're buying less stuff, and the stuff they're buying is coming in smaller packaging. Shrink, shrink, shrink goes the need for larger carts.

American Patriots will keep their money in the stock market.

You know that political message is coming...

For anyone that has most of their "assets" tied up in real estate and the stock market, they're fortunate if they're more than a little over half as wealthy as they were one year ago.

Better living through reuse.

BOSSES at a composting site in Suffolk are planning to use residents' rubbish to make electricity.

For years, Greenview Environmental has composted waste from St Edmundsbury and Forest Heath at its site in Lackford, near Bury St Edmunds.

But the firm now plans to use new technology to turn 26,000 tonnes of collected waste each year into compost and electricity.

The system involves green waste from kitchens and gardens being put through a modified Tollemache machine which pulverises the waste before air is forced through it, heating it up to kill potentially-harmful microbes.

The end product can then be left to become compost or fed through an anaerobic digester which will generate electricity.

It is believed the site could produce between one and three megawatts of electricity which will be sold to the National Grid.

The chairwoman of the National Automobile Dealers Association says the credit crunch and economic problems are likely to cause 700 auto dealers in the U.S. to go under this year.

There's more to it than that, I suspect.

My wife and I have larger vehicles that do not get the greatest gas mileage. On the other hand, mine is paid off, and hers will be in a few months. Yes, gas prices are high, but the truth of the matter is that I drive my car less than 8000 miles per year, and that's WITH vacation driving, and although she commutes five days per week, it's mostly highway driving. I suspect we drive less than the average family of four, thanks to my working at home.

My question is this: what is our economic incentive to buy a new car? Both of our vehicles are in pretty good shape. Miles per gallon could and should be better, but frankly, I think that buying a new car today is a fool's game - if technology doesn't improve MPG dramatically in the next five years - or replace MPG with a different fuel source altogether - then humanity is pretty well screwed by our own lack of initiative. I'm betting that cars five years from now will render the new cars of 2009 as relatively obsolete, or at least of little value on the resale market. So what is the economic incentive to buy a new car? I don't get it.

I didn't realize that they're still made in this country... And Altoona tested!

So the Dow dropped almost 7 % of price on Monday. What's everybody doing? Are they bailing out the market and swelling the catastrophe, or are they holding steady in their positions? I have to admit, my faith in the people who invest in the market isn't that high right now...