Not All The Democratic Economic News Is Good

The economy which has been a quagmire of suffering and despair since about 3 minutes after Bush took office in 2001 has made a sudden and dramatic turn-around since Democrats took control of Congress as documented by Mary Katherine Ham.

But the New York Times has found a bit of bad new to share in the midst of it's glowing report on Black Friday. But it's OK, because it's bad news about Wal-Mart.

But Wal-Mart, by far the nation’s biggest discount chain, threw cold water on that legacy this weekend, estimating that sales in November — including Black Friday — fell 0.1 percent, below its expectations.

At least they want you to think it's bad news. They want you to think that Wal-Mart's sales had actually gone down. Wal-mart missed its expectations by .1%. But they never tell you what those expectations were. Maybe Wal-Mart expected 6% growth and only got 5.9%. Granted .1% of Wal-Mart's sales represents a lot of money left on the table but would 5.9% growth from Wal-Mart really throw cold water on Black Friday. What if Wal-Mart expected to do 12% better than last year?

I don't know what Wal-Mart's expectations were - and neither does anyone reading this story. Nor does the Times mention that one reason Wal-Mart missed its number might be that much higher than expected traffic took their web site down for much of Friday. We just have to accept the Times' opinion that it was a cold shower on an otherwise hot sales weekend.

Posted by: Stephen Macklin at 05:28 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment