What do you do for a living other than shop? If you were out there as an entrepreneur or in sales you would know that things arent as optimistic as you seem to think. Perhaps you're living off Social Security and your savings, so you can just sit back and bitch about those that say the economy is tough. If you were in a competitive segment of the economy you would know things suck. My clients are hurting and as a result my business is off more than a third from last year.
Wow, it's Mr. Carper and his Usenet flames.
I sell telephone equipment online, I own the company. December was down some, but there are other reasons than "consumer confidence" for it. One was the calendar, which made it all too easy for people to just blow off the last couple of weeks of December. Having a pair of holidays fall on consecutive Wednesdays will do that. In my industry, decision makers weren't "postponing buying," they just flat weren't in the office at all. The calendar tricks gave kids from Dec. 19 thru Jan 6 as Christmas vacation, which is longer than normal. Oddly enough, December 19 was my last good day of the month. People just took off.
A second factor in my own business was that people bought their goodies from me in NOVEMBER, unsure of how they'd get everything installed in December, once again due to the weird calendar.
If things were as bad as you say, the doldrums would be continuing now, but things are now back at Nov. levels again. But my fortunes are not tied directly to consumer spending, since I'm business-to-business. Sure, bad retail doesn't help me, but it's not as bad as the media is painting it.
Michael