I drove through a shopping center with closing Linens and Things and a Circuit City, and it made me further realize that we are in deep, deep trouble right now.
You said — “I drove through a shopping center with closing Linens and Things and a Circuit City, and it made me further realize that we are in deep, deep trouble right now.”
You bet we’re in big trouble. The only good thing about that is that it will serve to put some constraints on the NObama administration, because when the whole country is collapsing because of the financial crisis, NObama will be really tied up in those issues, primarily. This will prevent Congress from going very “wild” with a lot of the kinds of programs that NObama would want, otherwise.
Last year, about this time, I stood in line to get a laptop computer that was on sale, on Thanksgiving Day, at a major electronics retailer. I got the good deal — but — they went out of business within a month from that date, before Christmas even got around.
Now, here we’ve got a bankruptcy going with another major electronics retailer, just a year later, and this is *leading into* the highest selling time of the year for them. If they couldn’t hold out until later, it must be really serious for them.
I would say that the “Great Depression” is going to *hit hard* next year — 2009. Look for it then, after the disappointing result from the Holiday Season comes in. Look for many different companies going into bankruptcies and many jobs being lost.
Companies go out of business in good times too. Both Linens N Things and Circuit City have been grossly mis-run companies for a while. For Linens n Thing the problem was deciding to go toe to toe against Bed Bath and Beyond a company with 10 times the revenue and not doing anything to separate themselves as different, heck even the store layout was the same. And Circuit City’s history of firing senior sales people (ie the people that actually knew what they were doing) has been long analyzed.
Don’t take the failure of two poorly run companies as indications of trouble. CC has definitely been doomed for a long time, they just had enough in the bank to delay it until now.
I got some good deals when my local Linens n’ Things closed. It’s a strange mixed feeling, happy saving money with a going out of business sale, but wondering how the employees are going to make ends meet when it’s over.
My local Circuit City is still operating normally. I hope I don’t get to take advantage of another such sale.
Lots of room for a few homeless shelters.