Some humor for this Black Friday

 Hopefully this is a slow news weekend.  Here's some levity for your long weekend from Adam Carolla:

Malaise hasn't left us

I get the sense, as I'm sure many do, that the economy is performing worse than the actual reported numbers have been indicating.  The unemployment numbers we've already heard were being misrepresented and they probably still are - after all we're never far from an election.  It used to be communist governments that would blatantly lie to their people.  I'm not naïve enough to think that the American government doesn't keep secrets from it's people and doesn't spy on them.  A certain amount of each is required for national security.  But to lie for political purposes is a gross violation of the public trust.

In any case, the malaise hasn't really left.  The GDP numbers, whether tweaked or not, have been dismal.  And this weekend - results look, well, underwhelming:

With the economy bumping along at a lackluster pace, and this year’s shorter-than-usual window between Thanksgiving and Christmas, sales and promotions began weeks before Thanksgiving Day, making this holiday shopping season more diffuse than ever. That left Black Friday weekend itself, the season’s customary kickoff, looking a bit gloomy.

Over the course of the weekend, consumers spent about $1.7 billion less on holiday shopping than they did the year before, according to the National Retail Federation, a retail trade organization.

“There are some economic challenges that many Americans still face,” said Matthew Shay, the chief executive of the retail federation. “So in general terms, many are intending to be a little bit more conservative with their budgets.”

In other words, Q4 2013 is shaping up to be not a great end to the year for the economy.  Take a look at this graph, and discounting any BLS manipulation, there is a clear result that jumps out:

 



After the massive stimulus that brought the United States a lifetime of additional debt, the economy has settled back to moribund, pitiful numbers.  The trend line since Q4 2009 has been downward.  The stimulus only worked, if it did at all, in the short term.  It was an unsustainable gambit that planted no real seeds of future growth.  There has been no solar power industry boom for example.  There has been no sudden growth of several hundred thousand jobs in the medical industry as Nancy Pelosi once assured voters there would be.

 

Perhaps at long last a malaise will settle in on president Obama's job approval and that of his cronies in the senate as well and they will be kept from returning office in 2014, while the president will be faced with a true lame duck status for the remainder of his term.  Only then will a chance at real recovery be feasible.

 

Another sign the 'recovery' isn't solid

What's in your wallet?

Well into an article about credit card debt rising again to dangerous levels, MyFoxDC reports (emphasis added);

In a weak economy with high unemployment, Dvorkin noted, many people with big card balances become vulnerable to financial catastrophe.

Lewis J. Altfest, a Manhattan adviser who targets professional, high-income clients, devotes part of his practice to telling the well-heeled how to cut back on credit card debt. "It's still a big problem. Some people want to live life to the fullest even though they are using their cards too much," Altfest explained. He said many clients last year tried to reduce card debt. But some "are falling back into their old ways."

Indeed, last holiday season many consumers financed Black Friday trips to the mall and Cyber Monday online buying sprees by making purchases with plastic, Dvorkin contends.

"As the bills begin to roll in, consumers may find themselves unable to pay them off. It's good to see an increase in consumer spending, but never is it worth going into debt," according to Dvorkin.

 In other words the situation hasn't changed much for consumers and the credit purchases may have put a lot of people back up towards their credit limits or credit comfort levels once again.  That means that if credit card purchases are fueling the tepid-at-best recovery then that recovery may have already run it's course or may be nearing that point soon.

It's one more thing for the president to choke on.

I had to work today.

I'll admit it, I'm Canadian.  Our Thanksgiving was back in October.  So today I was at work, missing Thanksgiving, missing football, missing Black Friday and missing the unofficial start of the holiday season.  Thanksgiving in the United States is a big deal.  In Canada the trappings of the holiday are the same, but the feeling isn't as intense. I think in the US, the Thanksgiving holiday has a deeper and more spiritual meaning and is just a bigger deal.

For some anyway.  Some people don't attach the spiritual connotation of God to it, like this guy. That's liberty for you.

Occupiers going after Black Friday retailers

Occupy Wall Street is turning into Occupy Wal-Mart.  "We're not anti-capitalism, we're anti-crapitalism".  No, really - they said it.  Sounds a little like "We're for the troops but against funding them because it supports war."

Below is a shortlist for publicly traded large businesses to Occupy or to boycott on Black Friday. Luckily, most of them don't have good presents anyway. If you want to see the top 100 retail businesses for 2010 to boycott, click here.