I'd just like to point out, kind of angrily, that all this fiscal cliff wrangling pissed away yet another holiday retail season, which tends to make up a commanding percentage of annual retail sales for stores across America.
My wife owns a store. She started it on a shoestring budget when she lost her job in 2008 when she was 6 months pregnant...now she not only has a job which she created, but she employs people. A job creator you might say. Tough as nails, that lady. The sort of story Republicans claim to support and champion. But not really. Their intransigence with the crap going on in DC does in fact directly impact what goes on in a mom and pop store. This holiday season my wife heard would-be customers day after day saying they're going to wait and see what happens with this fiscal cliff thing before making any purchases...
Well...
Christmas came and went while consumer confidence took a beating.
Retailers, scheduled to report their critical December same-store sales on Thursday, will likely show disappointing results hurt by factors including declining consumer confidence tied to Washington’s fiscal-cliff uncertainty, analysts said Monday. See related on consumers’ latest expectations as compiled by the Conference Board.
Consensus estimates for December, according to Retail Metrics data, fell another 0.2 percentage point on Monday for both same-store sales and the tallies excluding drug stores — to increases of 1.9% and 3.7%, respectively. Retail Metrics noted that the average analyst estimate has declined by 0.6 percentage point from the start of the month.
“This is significant downward move to sales estimates for the most important month of the year,” said Retail Metrics president Ken Perkins, noting that December alone represents about one-fifth of total annual sales.
Know what this means? It means mom and pop stores will be shutting their doors and retail workers will be losing their jobs all over America...
...all to keep money in the pockets of the 1%. To hell with the rest of us.