Posted on 05/22/2022 4:07:10 AM PDT by Kaslin
As one analyst put it, “Target didn’t just miss their quarterly numbers by a little, they missed them by A Lot!” That caused not only shares of Target stock to crater, it took the whole market with them. When the day’s bloodbath ended, hundreds of billions of net worth was gone. Our friends on the Left probably snickered that it serves the fat cat capitalists right. A little of their own medicine. They don’t understand (or care) that the losses come largely from IRA’s and 401K’s. Millions of hard working Americans, already buckling under the rising costs for food and fuel are now forced to watch their retirement savings shrink.
Two questions come to mind. First, how could this be happening to such a wonderfully woke and socially conscious company like Target? They were among the vanguard to open whatever rest room those patrons struggling with their sexual identities chose to use. Parents of small children be damned. When one of their stores was sacked and burned by mostly peaceful protesters following the death of George Floyd, they did the courageous thing. They turned the other check, pledging millions to BLM and other Social Justice causes.
Management got a shot of feel-good endorphins. Shareholders got the bill.
Why would their customers turn on such an elite virtue signaler? Don’t they know who the good guys are? Perhaps their patrons aren’t as cosmopolitan as management has led shareholders to believe? Maybe many mothers have doubts about genitaled males in their daughters’ bathrooms or the financing and force-feeding of leftist dogmas. Could certain demographics be voting with their dollars?
The second question dovetails with the first. Why were the suits on Wall Street so surprised by the bad retail numbers? Are they so divorced from economic reality? Can they be unaware of what real Americans are dealing with every day? Maybe the Wall Street big boys have figured out how to hedge the volatility of the market so that they win whichever way it moves. Or perhaps they are getting generous commissions regardless of whether the schmucks are buying or selling.
None of the problems confronted by the folks in flyover country matter much to the suits. It’s not their problem. They may see the price of gasoline and groceries mercilessly going up. But these represent a small percentage of the elites’ discretionary income. It won’t affect their vacation plans. And the people who are affected (the ones who live paycheck to paycheck) they aren’t Target shoppers anyway. Are they?
If you live in the Manhattan bubble or the one perched on the Potomac it’s easy to be surprised by the Target numbers. The cocktail parties continue. The band plays on. But these numbers reflect trends in the greater economy. For anyone paying attention they are screaming an alarm. The average family has only so much disposable income. The Brandonistas’ war on domestic energy and other bone-headed policies are creating the perfect economic storm.
How do these overpaid Wall Streeters and corporate execs not see this?
Massive deficits and easy money from the Fed has allowed a lot of preening and left-leaning CEO’s to look like they could virtue signal and produce nice returns at the same time. But as Warren Buffet observed, “when the tide goes out, we get to see who’s been swimming in the nude.” We may soon see the truth in the current meme going around, “Get woke, go broke.” Social Justice and Green New Deal dalliances were tolerated when things were good and dividends were rising. Shareholders may turn ugly when results turn red.
The red wave coming in November may mean even more heartburn for these woke titans of business. The Governor of Florida is demonstrating that political cheap shots from pampered corporatists will have consequences.
The day of reckoning is at hand.
Not all billionaires can be bullied. Elon Musk may be the first, but he won’t be the last lover of liberty to challenge the corrupt business models of the leftist leaders of the tech and social media world. They have been protected by a wall of patents and a belief that they could silence anyone who might challenge them. But now the gauntlet has been thrown down and these emperors have been shown to have no armor. Their mysterious algorithms no longer shield them.
Sanity is on the march. Truth warriors are at the gate. Let the pillaging begin.
(The Brandonistas’ war on domestic energy and other bone-headed policies are creating the perfect economic storm.)
Yeah. Unfortunately.
I would love for this to true, but I think we fool ourselves thinking this is the reason Target missed. Walmart also missed. It’s the overall Brandon economy, not wokeness, although I personally never shop at Target.
I don’t ever go to Targets. Been in one once a few years ago. I wouldn’t shop there because their wares seemed expensive for the area and materials cheap. When they decided to let any sex into the restrooms and dressing rooms I definitely wouldn’t think about going there. When a company virtue signals over a very few members of our society and doesn’t consider the majority worth worrying about, that tells me that company doesn’t need my business.
I lean to your side. It’s more the problem with the economy than with anger at Target’s virtue signaling.
Now they're dropping bigly like everybody else, only their drop is from a lower high than everybody else's high.
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Thank you for reminding me. We as a family decided to quit target for the reason mentioned. It’s been so long that we had forgotten the why. I’m sure there are many like us who refuse to use the businesses that hate normal thinking people and, though we may forget why we quit them, we STILL won’t go back.
I don’t discount consumer anger at corporate wokeness, and it certainly might be a factor in Target’s problems. I am still surprised that such stupid people could be put in charge of major businesses. In addition to consumer anger, I think that rising gas prices, rising food prices, shortages, and inflation in general are scaring the hell out of consumers. Put a lot of those into the mix and the bill for political leftism and corporate wokism, as you pointed out, has come painfully due. There is a shift in spending and it has business leaders losing sleep.
I agree. I too wish it were true, but Target went woke about 3 years ago and since then the stock has more than doubled. The recent crash is due to the overall state of the economy rather than the reaction of people to the wokeness of three years ago.
But then, Target chose to mandate the Woke’s gender madness, instead of common sense’s mandate to protect our girls, and I have not been in a Target since.
Like with Musk and with Reagan before him, my beliefs and opinions haven’t changed and I am still standing in the same place.
It’s the woke world that changed and they and theirs are actively and authoritatively shaping and shifting and pulling our definitions and perceptions to the left.
And so, what were only a few short years ago considered to be politically centered thinking and beliefs are now called right wing MAGA radicalism.
However, whatever they call it, reality hasn’t changed and the reality is: “Go woke, go broke”.
The rules are what they are and world works the way it does because God says so. Deal with it.
Go Woke!
Go Broke!
There has always been an element of class warfare in the deliberate bombing of the economy - “higher gas prices will make you buy an electric car”, “higher food prices will make you eat bugs”, etc, etc. It isn’t so much that the management of such companies disregards the preferences of their middle class customers, it’s that they hold them in open contempt. The problem, as the author states, it that it tends to make them hold their shareholders in equal contempt, and that isn’t quite as safe.
The also banned Merry Christmas
Amen to that! It’s like Disney. I guess they don’t want my business so they won’t get it.
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