Reality has a known bias? (http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/djf500/200806261704DOWJONESDJONLINE000760_FORTUNE5.htm)

We've been starting up a dead pool at the office to guess which retail-oriented businesses aren't going to make it till Christmas.

Mall chains first. we have one around here that specializes in selling plastic containers and such. yea thats a must in a bad economy.

Maybe the definition of "recession" needs to be altered. It's obvious we're in a significant downturn even if we don't meet the technical definition of a recession.

Mall chains first. we have one around here that specializes in selling plastic containers and such. yea thats a must in a bad economy.

The Container Store? It's always busy here.

Online retailing will pick up as people will perceive a savings on gas by shopping online. For some odd reason they will pay shipping without much bitching but will freak about the .15 gals of gas they used to drive there and back.

I think you'll see online retailing pickup with mall stores folding for a bit to avoid the high rents.

http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977364401

9. Goodbye Levitz - The furniture retailer, which is going out of business. Levitz first announced it was going out of business and closing all 76 of its stores in December. The retailer dates back to 1910 when Richard Levitz opened his first furniture store in Lebanon , PA. In the 1960s, the warehouse/showroom concept brought Levitz to the forefront of the furniture industry.

Levitz has been going out of business for more than 10 years. They've declared bankruptcy or reorganized more than once in the last 10 years. They've been in trouble a long time, and to attribute this to the current economic downturn is laughable. To me that makes that article null, even though there is other good information in there. Whomever wrote the article and included Levitz without some research is an idiot.

A Lot of the other stores on the list have been in trouble long before this current economic downturn. The downturn may have sounded the deathknell for some of the stores, but some of the others were going to fail with or without the current state of the economy.

Possibly, yet when the wife and I go out to dinner at night, ever single restraunt is still packed. When I drive by the large malls in Milwaukee the parking lots are usually 3/4's full and I constantly wonder WTF they are buying cause I haven't been in a mall in YEARS!

Levitz has filed for chapter 11 three times in the ten years. After the last one, they continued losing money. This time, they're liquidating assets.

My point is, it's not the current economic times that are causing Levitz to go out of business. They've done a shitty job of running their company for years.

To add a little background, my dad is a furniture sales rep., and the furniture business IS crap right now, though my Dad has seen business slower than right now. He's told me stories for YEARS (going back to at least 95) about how poorly Levitz is run (they were an account for him over the years with various furniture lines). They NEVER paid the manufacturers on time for their shipments, NEVER. Even when their business was good, they were slow payers, which makes the larger, more recognizable furniture lines much less likely to sell to a store. That becomes self destructive, especially as a chain that's predominantly in larger cities. Brand recognition in a larger city with more furniture stores is a big deal.

Levitz isn't going out of business because of the current economy. They are going out of business because they have never paid their bills on time (at least over the last 22 years my Dad has been a sales rep), and they haven't run the business well in years.

In a good economy, they continue limping along. With no one buying houses or furniture, they liquidate.

I don't call 3 bankruptcies in 10 years "limping along." I call it delaying the inevitable.

Many of the companies you consider large and strong have been in chapter 11 multiple times. It's not that big a deal if you reorg.

However, Levitz isn't reorging this time.

Completely irrelevant to the fact that the list includes a thousand or two retail shops closing down so far this year anyway. It's not as if they were all looking to Levitz to decide what to do.

No, I was just commenting on Levitz because I've been aware of their issues for years. It wouldn't be prudent for me to comment on the others in ways as I have of Levitz because I don't know specifics with their organizations.

I can see if I can get more info about Levitz from my Dad if you are interested though.

And don't get me wrong, I think the economy is complete shit right now.

Does this mean I shouldn't buy a pool or get a new deck?

Man this shit worries me :(

Does this mean I shouldn't buy a pool or get a new deck?

Man this shit worries me :(


No need to worry unless your employer is one of those that is on shaky ground.

People buying online has been keeping the Postal Service from losing too much money, although we are still bleeding. Our parcel post revenue has been rising at the same time first class mail has been dropping, with people e-emailing and texting rather than writing letters; and, bill paying has also moved to electronic options for many people.

Safest employment these days is in Corrections; there are going to be people going to prison at the same or an increased rate for the foreseeable future, and there is a need for people to supervise them.

No need to worry unless your employer is one of those that is on shaky ground.

That's kind of like the people a year ago saying there was no need to worry about the housing crisis unless you were in NY, LA, or Miami. Obviously, the housing industry was more interdependent than that.

Our salaries are too.

Could be that this retail shrinkage we are seeing is the result of overeaching by retailers who where using growth and expansion to leverage investors and stock inflation on wallstreet. I.E. as long as the stock market revenues flowed in and continued to increase these corporations could use accounting tricks to hide and keep afloat unprofitable and under performing locations because 985 active outlets on paper trumped 537 actuall money making endeavors.

Safest employment these days is in Corrections

Go! Go! "War on drugs". corparate run prisons need more revenue streams for sure.

i dunno man, cell phones is still rather good. I have ZERO fear of losing my job due to store closures any time within say 5 years. I am in a more rural area comparatively to Orlando and Tampa so my store would be the higher on the list to go, but we are still rocking the house. Only thing we have seen suffer is accessory sales, such as cases and bluetooths, though car chargers havent slid much.

As far as restaurants/malls being full. Malls are a good place to kill time for free you can window shop and just enjoy social interaction. With the rising costs of food and the restaurants all in one area competing its not that uneconomical to eat out as it used to be. My household spends roughly $150 a week in groceries due to illness,time, and a youth all-star baseball tournament team i am coaching, we ate out all meals this week but breakfasts. And this is 5 people (3 adults and 2 kids), we spent about $140 dollars, with about 30 of that being on my obsession with sunflowers seeds and baseball being united. Editting some of those meals to more healthy salad bar type places and we would of ate rather healthly (i have diabetes, my roomate is losing weight for a upcoming surgery so we have to eat somewhat healthy already)

The lovely board just ate one of my replies again. What I said in much more detailed fashion before I was so rudely errored out was that higher education, being tax revenue dependent, is having to make heavy cuts as well, even in relatively affluent districts like mine; and our board just had to trim our budget for next year by several million dollars, eliminating all full-time temporary (annual contract) teaching positions in the district in the process and replacing them with adjuncts, who work a maximum of 3/4 time and don't have to be paid benefits. Being tenure track, this means I'll be picking up some of that slack (we lose a Biology and a Chemistry position) by carrying the maximum allowable overload this fall; but I have to think that if things continue to tighten they will be looking at the 'not yet tenured' and eliminating those positions by attrition next, despite the fact that the poor economy means our enrollments are likely to grow substantially.

I think we are in for a very rocky next few years, and that the snowball
is just starting to pick up steam...

Regards,
Nydia

That's kind of like the people a year ago saying there was no need to worry about the housing crisis unless you were in NY, LA, or Miami. Obviously, the housing industry was more interdependent than that.

Our salaries are too.

Did you read what I was replying to?


"Does this mean I shouldn't buy a pool or get a new deck?

Man this shit worries me :("

Unless her employment is shaky, she should not need to worry about her purchase. Seems like a fairly safe comment to make, without any need for a comparison to the housing industry debacle.

Uh, yeah, I did read it. Slow down and think about what I wrote, before rushing to complain.

The point is that everyone's employment is shaky for the time being, whether they realize it or not. Just like with the housing market, our economy is extremely interdependent.

Personally, I wouldn't dream of making a purchase that I wouldn't regret if I didn't make another dollar of disposable income for the next year or two. It is almost certain that this will be much worse before it gets better.

"Does this mean I shouldn't buy a pool or get a new deck?


How much of the economic downturn do you think is created by people saying "I'll hold off on that for now"

I wonder how much that pushes the already slowing down into a complete stall and crash.

I was thinking the same thing. Holding off on spending as an individual is smart, but if everyone did that we'd have even more problems.

We are spending 20k right now on our first major home improvement.

No, not everyone's job is in jeopardy right now Sanchek. My wife works for a company that does power generation, nope, her job isn't in danger right now. In fact they are talking about regrading her pay so she'll make more money right now due to her experience and her position within the company.

I agree with Taleran on this.

We need like 3 more stimulus checks. Have the government print $1800 per person, and we can spend it all on Chinese goods at Wal-Mart while the dollar loses more value!

Right now we should all apply for government jobs, during a recession like this they hire like crazy.

That notion of "everyone just keep spending and it'll be okay" is something that gets pushed hard, but it's not always applicable.

The current downturn is mainly due to a lack of liquidity, all the way from the top of the financial institutions down to individual home owners. There is no "just keep spending", when the money isn't there to spend.

/shrug

We are financing a grand total of $4500 out of $23000 of our basement (after flooring, bathroom fixtures, tv for my office, etc.) We don't really have an option right now but to expand our house with a little one on the way in October. We certainly wouldn't be finishing our basement unless we could foot most of the bill right now. No, we don't do things we can't afford now, but we didn't do that when the economy was good either.

I'm not concerned about my wife's job one bit though, she's in an industry that must keep moving forward for the world to succeed. Her company also has $100s of millions of contracts through 2010, and they are turning away business because their company is booming right now. Granted most of the work she's doing are for Chinese, Korean, and Malaysian oil companies, (they do a lot for BP, Shell, and Conoco Phillips as well) so they aren't as dependent on the American economy as much. They do have some domestic interest though as they are doing power gen for Massachusetts and more.

Again, the economy as a whole sucks. It's just not hitting every industry the same as you would attempt to say.

For every job like my wife's though, there's 100 like my Dad's that are killing them right now because it's completely housing/credit/general economy dependent. I'm somewhere in the middle. I do IT for a law firm, as long as they stay in business, I have a job.

Again, that sounds exactly like the people here in Atlanta who assured each other that the housing market was only going to have trouble in a few inflated areas. Atlanta was definitely a safe spot to invest, because the city was growing and real estate here was a sure bet!

I do hope everything turns out just fine. I certainly don't want your wife or you to lose your job.