Larry asks what happened to the bah humbug economy. The answer is really quite simple, consumers were bombarded with report after report featuring absurd discounts on every product imaginable and they consumed. However, anyone taking comfort in these numbers needs to go take a stiff drink and wait for the final seasonal retail numbers to come in before loading up their portfolio on Best Buy and Amazon stock.

Maybe there’s some hope for the holiday season after all. Spending on Cyber Monday – the Black Friday of online shopping – jumped 15 percent from the year before, with online shoppers dropping a cool $846 million in a single day, according to comScore. In fact, spending was up throughout the entire Thanksgiving holiday weekend, starting [...]


[From Cyber Monday spending jumps 15 percent. What happened to bah humbug economy?]

Consumers exercising their diminished Christmas budgets in one weekend won’t result in a boost for holiday sales, and retailers offering 50-70% discounts are simply choosing to lose less money. There are no indicators that suggest consumers will spend anything like they have in recent years and with credit card debt already topping the charts and credit card companies proactively trimming credit limits, well the picture becomes quite predictable.