It’s getting to look a lot like an OK Christmas.
The big shipping companies that should know are saying that this holiday shopping season will be decent. Now that may not be enthusiastic enough to set visions of sugar plums dancing in your head, but the retail group at Deloitte projects that U.S retail sales will increase by 2% from the 2009 levels during the November to January holiday shopping season. That compares to a 1% increase in holiday sales last year.
As I said, an OK Christmas.
Shipments are solid, FedEx, the world’s second largest package shipping company told Wall Street back on September 16.
Delta Air Lines, which carries for airfreight than any other U.S. airline, told Bloomberg that it will have a “perfectly decent” holiday season.
Li & Fung, the Hong-Kong-based company that is the biggest supplier of clothes and toys to retailers such as Wal-Mart and Target told Bloomberg “It’s a lot better than last year, our orders are way ahead.”
Retailers, according to the shippers, are rebuilding inventories that had dropped to near record lows in anticipation of the holiday shopping season.
And some of them are actually hiring—temp jobs, of course. Toys R Us, for example, plans to hire 45,000 workers for the holiday period. That’s 10,000 more than last year.
I’d also like to “hear” them……
Uh,
GW’s “Wall St. Bailout” was enacted (depending on which Treasury Meeting you attended) to stop the US, and most of the world, from plunging headfirst into the 17th Century or a variation thereof.
Perhaps understanding the specifics of issues, instead of just spouting the same cliched nonsense (we’ve been running big deficits long before the bailout, and much bigger deficits since, for instance) might make your points more valid.
What more emphasis (is this money?) can we put on the quality of education? Vouchers? Firing underperforming teachers? I’m curious to here your thoughts
I believe you’ve heard those ideas from someone who didn’t actually implement them. The only “infrastructure” I’ve seen is making a traffic circle out of a perfectly reasonable intersection, turning a normal intersection into a Y shape, and shutting down or narrowing a highway for months on end to lengthen ramps that I’ve never seen clogged. We DO need high-speed internet lines, an improved electrical grid, and alternative energy. However, NONE of those projects are happening around here, and the environmental wackos are blocking a solar plant because it might affect tortises! And we still haven’t killed cable and phone company monopolies that eliminate any incentive to upgrade current broadband options.
Jim, are you repeating your postings? Jim, are you repeating your postings? Deja vu.
A “good” Christmas? Really? Well, let’s hope the numnuts in DC extend the tax cuts to those in need – the 97% of Americans that aren’t millionaires – and don’t extend them to those that are. BTW – how can one argue that the deficit, caused by GW’s Wall Street bailout, is BAD while, at the same time, argue to extend tax cuts to the wealthy? What a country.
Your “big” ideas about fixing the US economy and competitiveness sound familiar – major infrastructure spending, emphasis on quality of education, “helping” those companies that actually keep jobs here…. hmmm, where have I heard those before?