If you’re like most Americans, this blessed holiday season the grown-ups in your family agreed to buy presents “just for the kids” while everyone else huddled beneath a single thin quilt like Charlie Bucket’s grandparents. As a result, newly released holiday sales figures were unbelievably sucky. Congratulations, consumers! Your failure to continue to borrow and spend as usual has finally ruined even our discount retailers. MORE »

Ever go to a quaint marketplace in Mexico or Morocco or maybe some flea market in a sports arena parking lot on Sunday morning and haggle over the myriad gewgaws? That is what shopping in America will be like, next year! Or maybe right now. With 148,000 retail store closures in 2008 and another 73,000 predicted for the first few months of 2009, some 20% of all American shops will be gone. And the ones that remain will basically give you whatever you want for whatever coins in your purse. MORE »

Congratulations, the War on Xmas is over. And guess who lost? Christmas! And the economy. Especially the economy. Looks like all the 70%-off sales in the world can’t squeeze money out of people with no money and no credit. It’s almost as if Santa left a lump of shit coal for U.S. Retailers! How many other variations of Seasonal Cliche can we squeeze out of American journalists and economists? MORE »