So it looks like not all the financial news, this Xmas, is bad. Apparently, the sales dropoff in stores was only 2%->4%, and Amazon had a monster Xmas, with sales up 17%.
If you're an MBA, spreadsheet driven bean-counting 80's Reaganaut, that might seem like a disaster, but considering the general atmosphere, it's not a bad result for the stores, bearing in mind that to really get a pulse on the economy, we have to see what happens now that the winter sales season has started. Amazon's results suggest that at least part of the drop-off in brick & mortar sales have been made up by online sales, which is a trend that, quite frankly, many people expected to be stronger.
From an economic perspective. it seems to be reasonably good news, as is all activity in the retail sector. It suggests that if the government can stabilize the housing market, by reducing the number of foreclosures and hence allowing the banks to take small but absorbable losses, then we might be in for a much softer landing in the consumer economy than would otherwise occur.
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