Retail business's Death Spiral?? (credit card, house, to buy)

[Delphi]

“In the Tank Forever” U.S. Consumers Retailers in a "Death Spiral" Davidowitz Says: Tech Ticker, Yahoo! Finance

Even if he is 50% correct, we will see a dramatic change in American life style.

We can't boost up our consumerism by over leveraging on the credit card and house ATM.

With outsourcing of jobs (manufacturing as well as services), our wage pattern remained flat or down, and we can't make it up with more debt on credit card.

Thanks to corporate greed and our politicians for slowly destroying the middle class.

Time is coming when their green will destroy themselves!!!!! We already saw the trailer of that show in the last one year.

Your thoughts?

[CaptainNJ]

Originally Posted by Delphi

Thanks to corporate greed

how is "corporate greed" to blame?

[Delphi]

Originally Posted by CaptainNJ

how is "corporate greed" to blame?

How is not? Jobs being destroyed in this country. Wealth is going outside instead of circulating in our country. People are trying to find way to make up for the lost wage(credit card..house ATM). Wall street banks are creating more or more innovative (and useless) derivatives (like CDO/CDO2) to fuel the debt spiral..etc..etc

[CaptainNJ]

Originally Posted by Delphi

How is not? Jobs being destroyed in this country. Wealth is going outside instead of circulating in our country. People are trying to find way to make up for the lost wage(credit card..house ATM). Wall street banks are creating more or more innovative (and useless) derivatives (like CDO/CDO2) to fuel the debt spiral..etc..etc

they are just providing products that people want to pay for at prices people are willing to pay. you cant blame corporate greed without blaming consumers.

[Delphi]

Originally Posted by CaptainNJ

they are just providing products that people want to pay for at prices people are willing to pay. you cant blame corporate greed without blaming consumers.

I think they have started providing cheap products and consumers are responding to that.

[CaptainNJ]

Originally Posted by Delphi

I think they have started providing cheap products and consumers are responding to that.

yeah? consumers like low prices, businesses are trying to provide that.

[sholden]

Originally Posted by Delphi

How is not? Jobs being destroyed in this country. Wealth is going outside instead of circulating in our country. People are trying to find way to make up for the lost wage(credit card..house ATM). Wall street banks are creating more or more innovative (and useless) derivatives (like CDO/CDO2) to fuel the debt spiral..etc..etc

Blaming "greedy corporations" for the whole thing is jut a tad over the top.

Nobody forced people to shop at wallmart, but surprise surprise people like cheap stuff.

Sure corporations did what would make them the biggest buck, but that's hardly unexpected.

Corporations trying to make a buck, and consumers trying to save a buck are about equal in blame. But neither of them are the biggest contributors and both of them are expected behavior that isn't going to change. If you rig the deck then this is what you would expect the deck.

So the real blame goes to those who rigged the deck, which would be:

* The Fed, for setting interest rates at ridiculously low levels. Without which the people could not have afforded so much debt and the "crunch" would have come sooner. Hopefully before the debt bubble got so big.

* The Federal Government (Congress and Executive) for providing incentive after incentive for people to take on debt, and for business to move things offshore.

* The State Governments for also providing those incentives

* China for pseudo-pegging to the dollar which allowed things to get as bad as they have in terms of the balance of trade and debt levels.

It should be noted that the middle two there are really the fault of the people, since they voted for the idiots (or didn't bother voting at all which is the same as approving whomever wins).

The last point is the underlying cause, but it only became a problem because the US exploited the situation to get lots of stuff for worthless IOUs. Which was beneficial in the short term, but we are going to see the long term effects soon enough.

[CaptainNJ]

Originally Posted by sholden

* The Federal Government (Congress and Executive) for providing incentive after incentive for people to take on debt, and for business to move things offshore.

look at cash for clunkers, you had a car that was payment free but now you have 4,500 reasons to take on more debt.

[mgt04]

Originally Posted by CaptainNJ

look at cash for clunkers, you had a car that was payment free but now you have 4,500 reasons to take on more debt.

BINGO

Unless you had $10K or more lying around in cash

[block911]

The debt levels of the US consumer is at all time high levels. There is no savings. The consumer already borrowed all they can. The FED is still trying to inflate the credit. The horse is dead, more whipping won't help. We need to start a plan to go back to healthy times. The government needs to accept the fac that people need to save instead of spend. We need to invest in our productive capacity for good that other nations want to buy. America cannot borrow it's way to prosperity. All the bailout cost has been loaded on the tax payer. Nothing has been fixed. Only the burden to bear the crash has been moved off the wall street crooks and shareholders to the shoulders of the tax payers. The train has left the stations decades ago. FED is still trying to avoid depression. If you inflate the credit supply this much, the cause is already in place for a deflationary crash, Great Depression style