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Please let's keep our eyes on the ball. I'm sure many freepers have noticed that their local malls are becoming ghost towns with stores shuttering left and right due to no customers. In my area we also have more and more deserted strip malls that are now 100% devoid of the smaller shops and stores that were open and operating a year ago.

It's not only JCP, but other mall anchor department stores that are virtually bereft of shoppers all day long especially on week days.

Some empty mall stores that were formerly bustling with customers are now rented out to discounters, fly-by-nights selling cheap Chinese crappioli as well as flea market-type vendors.

The few customers that can be seen in the two Penney's within driving distance of me probably are totally unaware of the chain's gay policy. So let's keep our lazer beam on the main cause of the collapse of businesses in our country.....it's the economy, stupid. This is how we're going to bring down the Obama administration, not with a plethora of divisive side issues as Obama loves to have us concentrate on.

In the case of JCPenney, the gayness policy in actuality plays but a small part of the company's coming blackout. The simple fact is that no one is spending any discretionary money any more. They're holding on to it.

Leni

You are right. My city of 40,000 had two malls. The only thing left in one is a very samll Sears store. The other larger mall is half empty. It contains a Penneys and some other no name places. There is no reason to go in there except for the Hallmark store.

There is something going on at JC Penney that goes far beyond the general economic sluggishness.

Sales tumbled almost 23 percent to $3.02 billion. Revenue at stores opened at least a year fell 21.7 fell, worse than the 18.9 percent drop in the first quarter.

Retail sales and the economy in general are no where near those dismal results. A 23% drop in sales is a disaster on a scale seldom seen in so short a period of time.

Malls shuttering in some places, not others. The closest one here is doing fine: just opened a MASSIVE new Von Maur (sp?) anchor department store, opened a new Lego store (prime example of “specialty”), and I can’t think of any closed storefronts beyond the usual turnover. The Chick-fil-a always has 6-8 clerks plus backup staff.

That said, I have to wonder about the viability of classic department stores. A little careful shopping at specialty/boutique stores turns up better products at better deals than be-everything behemoths. Those offending basic sensibilities, tenfold.

I've noticed that many malls that are trying to stay open are going third-world: Mexican. One of the oldest malls in Ft Worth was a popular open air design with covered walkways and four or five major anchor stores. As the neighborhood declined due to, or in tandem with, the influx of illegal aliens, the mall switched hands several times and was converted into an indoor mall to match all the other cookie-cutter malls. Perhaps it was because the open air concept exposed more businesses to crime through easy concealment an access, but that just goes to prove the increase in crime in the area coincided with the illegal population.

Now, the mall is nothing but a Mexican flea market - a complete pig sty. All of the anchor stores have long ago fled. They even fly Mexican flags over the structure, as kind of a gesture of conquest, I guess. Conquest, but destruction, like their own country.