Obviously, Black Friday will be a failure.
Disposable household income is down. House values are down. Stock values are down. Net worth, at least by any honest measurement is down. Savings return no income, and have no prospect of doing so. Government employees are in some danger of losing their jobs and, unless they have cognitive problems, should know that their pensions will start later and return far less. Europe is about to fail. China has a trustworthiness factor of approximately zero. And then there’s the minor detail that the world is drowning in debt and there’s no prospect for growth, so there’s no hope for any of this to improve without a reset, and the politicians aren’t going to let that happen.
So we know Black Friday will fail. How will they spin it.
Some recent strategies have been:
1. Lie now, and revise the assessment later.
2. Confuse. Cite anything but actual sales volume. For example, breathlessly cite “increased traffic” or “more items purchased”.
3. Streeeeeetch. Instead of having Black Friday run from 5:00 a.m. to midnight, do it 24 hours. Or 36 or 48.
4. Accounting tricks. Change the numbers being compared and put a footnote somewhere. Either make last year’s numbers lower, or this year’s higher, or more likely, do both.
5. Eliminate the negative reporters; accentuate the positive reporters.
Whatever the approach, I’m sure the press release was written months ago.
The news sources I read are saying nothing about sales volume. That’s a first. The WSJ posted a very early article headlined “Earlier hours yield promising start.” Local NC papers are just saying that malls were not as crowded. NPR said that online buying was heavier than last year.
You know it’s a dire situation when it’s so bad that National Retail Federation can’t even spin a lie. Here’s the most powerful hype on their website this morning, “The number of people who say they are “definitely” shopping Black Friday weekend rose from 27% in 2010 to 33% this year.” Sounds like the CSO (Chief Spinning Officer) must be in rehab and leaving the crucial holiday shopping propaganda to the Assistant to the District Manager of Spin.
It was an all-time blockbuster according to Shoppertrak “estimates”, whoever they are.
Nov. 27 (Bloomberg) — Black Friday sales increased 6.6 percent to the largest amount ever as U.S. consumers shrugged off 9 percent unemployment and went shopping.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.co…L#ixzz1evXD84Qb
My recollection was that the Nat. Retail Fed. normally released some figures late Friday night, but not this year. The article says the NRF will release data today for the “Thanksgiving weekend” sales figures.
- Slipnslide
