Any armchair economists want to predict if Black Friday will be black?

will the people be sucked in by promises of cheap T.V.'s and laptop computers once again this year to make it look like everything is hunky-dory in the retail world?

too many people worried about having a job, or being able to keep their house. My prediction is that sales will be flat, and Black Friday will put many retailers in the red.

the many consumer tend to buy now pay later at Christmas adn run up the credit cards. I can't even begin to tell you how often I've heard people comment that they are having to use credit to keep themselves in food and gas while they look for a second job. If too many people have cards too close to getting maxed out - or that they've closed because the bank tried to jack up the rate - blah blah etc etc - then the typical buy now pay later christmas shopping season won't be anythign to write home about.

There will once again be lines out the door and around the block and people beating the shit out of each other for cheaply priced goods on 11/23. :eyes:

And it will be for stores like Wal-Mart and maybe Target. People stuffed on turkey and wine will stay up all night, line up outside these stores, and go hog-wild with their credit cards.

Then next week things will turn ugly immediately. (They still won't tell us this until January).

It will be the worst holiday retail season we've seen in a long time.

But next year will infinitely worse, after a colossal series of: Bankruptcies, defaulted mortgages (which readjust just after New Years), when we are paying five dollars a gallon for gas, and when inflation is so astronomical that people have trouble affording food at the local grocery store, and when the markets have corrected severly downwards after the U.S. dollar disintegrates.

I saw a commercial yesterday for the local outlet mall. The stores will open at midnight with a special 25% discount. I've never seen that before and it pissed me off to know that stores are forcing their employees to work at this hour. It seems very desperate to me.

I already did most of my shopping anyway, and as a rule I don't participate in Black Friday. Besides, the best time to shop is the weekend before Christmas when prices are even lower, and I go to one mall in my area as tradition on Christmas Eve mostly to walk around. Sales this year are gonna be even lower than last year so I'm not getting my hopes up.

no way in the world I would deal with that craziness.

BLUE:D

Year after year...same story...we didn't do as well as we'd hoped.
After the devalued dollar making imports more expensive, $3.30/gallon gas, and a major housing DEPRESSION, it's gonna be a shitty year for the retailers.
OTOH, the yacht brokers, Benz dealerships, and Tiffany stores will certainly have a big holiday season.

Never mind the bar is already buried in the dirt. Potemkin economics.

The retailers will try to call it a success in order to mobilize reluctant shoppers who will then feel guilty for not spending enough, who will figure that they now should go out and spend...

But this year I have some doubts this scheme will work. It's too obvious that our nation is in financial dire straits.

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/best-buy-reportedly-talks-vivek/story.aspx?guid=%7BD1AA83B1-973B-4CB8-9487-C1CB691CE704%7D



Shocked? I'm not.

Pity mom and pop didn't fathom out the migration globalization a long time ago. Oh, there is a silly conclusion to all this. Which would satisfy Al Gore (though I'm not sure why) and everyone else. Nobody just wants to hear it. Maybe I should finish that book after all; people love tinfoil fodder. :crazy:

A LOT of the deals are going to be online, or over the weekend, or even on Monday. Retailers are really, really desperate.

I think we'll still see the stampedes at Walmart for cheap ass Chinese laptops but I think it's not going to make a dent in this shitty year. Not with oil prices on the rise and the subprime mess exploding all over the place. I got laid off from Chase Card Services customer service shortly after the subprime mess got huge and there were shit tons of people calling in to cancel their cards because they were cutting back.

Actually, the rumor that has been circulating is that there will be few if any sales this season due to the increased costs of production and shipping, which the retailers cannot afford to absorb.

But something tells me you may well be right that they would rather move inventory than make profit at this point, trying to squeeze out the last few cents from the American consumer.

It looks like I'll be able to get the 46" model of the one I want because several places have it cheaper than the 42" I initially budgeted for. :wow:

:9

I still like my 32 incher (anything above 40" would show off too much DVD compression artifacting for my liking...)

I promised myself I would have the rig of my dreams when I got my own place, so I scrimped and saved and I'm just about able to get the TV. :D

(Being an A/V geek sucks when you're broke)

people find deals on the things they have wanted.

Thanks for letting us know about these sorts of websites. I'll have to Google for them; they definitely sound interesting.

I used to love shopping as much as anyone, but lately my favorite thing to do on Black Friday is listen to the traffic reports out of major cities and my police scanner, because tempers run so high during the holidays!

Stay cool, and good luck on your search for bargains.

- The Consumerist: http://www.consumerist.com - this is one of my favorite blogs period, not only do they have daily deals every morning but they're a great source of consumer-related news and tips on how to cut through corporate red tape when you have a problem.

-Deal Hack: - http://www.dealhack.com - Where most of the Consumerist deals come from. They also have lots of coupon codes and the like.

-Black Friday Ads - http://bfads.net/ - There are a lot of Black Friday sites but this one's my favorite.

Also, if you use Firefox, there's a plug-in called RetailMeNot that will automatically let you know if there are coupon codes for an online merchant when you hit their page. :)

My mama raised me to never pay retail. :rofl:

Bookmarked!

It'll be interesting to watch all of this play out.

Good luck with your pursuit of good deals!

Let us know how it goes.

finally bit the dust a couple of weeks ago so we headed out to that-store-which-shall-not-be-named :hide: for a new HDTV. You know where is within moped range for Mr 'pede to do the in initial reconnaissance and we didn't spend a half tank of gas picking the thing up. That's Xmas.

Some other cinema fans here convinced me that HDTV would be fantastic.

I have no idea what it costs or how I'm going to replace all my regular DVDs with HD-DVDS or whatever they are called.

I just remember around ten years ago paying $1,000 each for two portable DVD players and not only do I never use them, but portable DVD players are now a couple hundred bucks. As an early adaptor of many technologies, I've learned to be skeptical for a few months, just in case some new format turns out to be like the Beta tapes that lost out to VHS in the 80s. And also Laserdisc. Anyone remember Laserdisc?

ON EDIT: Err, sorry, that got a bit off topic.

at a friend's house, actually we were switching back and forth between two games, one of which was not being broadcast in HD, the difference was incredible. My friends says he's now an HD snob, and really only watches shows in HD. It's definitely worth the money if you can afford it. I hear that once you watch a movie on Blu-Ray, you're spoiled.

The economy's in the shitter, gas prices are waaaaaaaaaaaaay up, nobody's living on their equity anymore, and as an added bonus, the sales I've seen aren't that great.

My guess is the few who don't have to do any major belt-tightening are still going to be wary of waste, and will hold out for better deals in December.

the price of gas, groceries, and everything else. Two people, perfect strangers commented to me on prices at the grocery store today, and a middle-aged couple remarked on prices at the hardware store. People are struggling to pay for basics. I don't think too many have the money for big-ticket items.

as people with plastic realize this might be their last decent Xmas. I think they'll be restrained this year, but I don't think they're going to skip it entirely.

We went grocery shopping yesterday, we go past a new outdoor mall that's still in development they're building restaurants and stores on the other side of the road now. Anyway the parking lots were full, all of the chain restaurants were full, it looked like people were spending as hard as always.

The kmart up the street, was nearly deserted, so, I don't know how to explain this, except that it is the middle of the month and a good chunk of people probably just got paid, it may look like a ghost town next week.

Just going to the mall and knitting. :)

They'll use catch phrases and obfuscatory language until forced to admit that, oops, it wasn't too good after all.

.

it with interest since. I'm seeing "Help Wanteds" in most stores in my rather newly-developed area, so the retailers are hopeful.

My own predix? this year will just break even, next year, if we by some slim chance have a RRRepunlican in the WH and don't turn the Congress bluer, things will be dismal indeed.