A Blue Christmas?

Everyone in the United States is feeling the effects of our bad economic conditions. Retail stores have been reporting their September sales and many companies saw signifacnt declines in sales, some even hitting double digits. This is not a good sign with Christmas right around the corner. J.C. Penney's same-store sales fell 12.4% compared to last year, American Eagle's sales fell 6% and Kohl's decreased 5.5%. Dean Hillier, a partner and a retail specialist with A.T. Kearney, a management consultancy, said the Christmas shopping season "could quite frankly be one of the worst we've seen in 25 years."

Discount stores have been the only bright spots. Costco's sales are up 6% and Wal-Mart's sales were up 2.2%, and that may not seem like a lot, but it's better than facing the losses that most retailers are facing. Even Target, a very popular and trendy retailer, faced losses in September of 3%. Target's cheif executive and president, Gregg W. Steinhafel, said the decreases in sales can be attributed to "the economic slowdown as well as higher net write-off rates in Target's credit card segment"

The economy has been effecting everyone. Not only your regular, everyday people are feeling the effects, even huge retailers are taking a hit from our failing economy. MasterCard SpendingPulse, which measures national retail sales, said a steep drop in consumer spending sent its specialty retail sales index down 7.7 percent in September from the same month a year ago. This is really a sad sight, especailly with Christmas approaching so fast. If the sales declines over the past month or so, this could shape up to be a Christmas full of board games and movie tickets.