Posted on 12/26/2005 7:22:28 PM PST by RWR8189
NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. consumers spent 8.7 percent more during the just ended holiday shopping period than in the comparable period a year ago, according to a report from an affiliate of MasterCard Inc., the Wall Street Journal reported in its online edition on Monday.
The study, by SpendingPulse, covered the period from the Friday after the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday through December 24, Christmas Eve. That period included 30 days in 2005, compared with 29 days in 2004.
The report found the biggest increases in spending on home furnishings, up 15.2 percent, followed by consumer electronics and appliances, up 10.5 percent. Spending on jewelry was down 4.6 percent.
The report covers spending in stores and on the Internet, and includes food sales. It excludes spending on autos and gasoline.
Which holiday?
Ironically, I was reading my parents' 1987 World Book Encyclopedia today on the history of the US during Reagan's early years and was pretty surprised to see things like "tax cuts" "wealthy" "worst unemployment since Great Depression".
Lots of people buying Festivus poles apparently.
For being so "progressive" these people haven't had a new idea in my lifetime.
Me either! And get this...
...I'm 273 years old!
Sky high? yea ooook
Expect the NY Times to find something wrong soon..expect the headlines to be bad come next week
"There just has to be some bad news here somewhere" said the NYT editors.
You beat me to that thought by 10 seconds.
Yeah, the format goes like this:
Let me be the first to say:
It's Bush's fault.
Several times today I heard on the radio that the after Christmas sales seemed strong despite a flat pre Christmas period. They must have meant in relation to the ever increasing expectations the MSM put on this year's sales. It seems that nothing during the 8 years of the Bush presidency is going to be reported in a positive light.
I knew I should have just stayed home.
The Bush economy is far stronger than anything during the Clinton years. Nobody is losing their farm on a dot-com bubble. This is real stuff.
DUmmies on suicide watch yet again? Their seratonin re-uptake inhibitor system must be on red alert overload by now.
Kwaanza, of course. Followed by Ramadan gifts.
How can this be with CNN writing this:
"Many stores -- stymied by shoppers procrastinating even longer than last year -- are relying even more on the post-holiday business to meet their modest sales goals..."
And this would be why I chose to ignore the stories by the MSM saying sells were depressed this year. It was tenpting to take them at face value, and I resisted this time. After Katrina they relinquished any rights to claim they publish the Truth.
Now we see them reporting the Truth after the fact here, same way they did after the fact with the hurricanes. Meaning all those previous stories were lies.
I personally procrastinated until the last week then spent a ridiculous sum of money right up to Christmas Eve. I'm willing to believe others did the same as I did this year, usually I'm better about it, but nothing would convince me sells were mediocre. I wasn't fighting for a parking spot without cause.
"Democrats Running in 2006, Elderly and Poor Worst Hit"
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