[pup55]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he nation's shoppers set aside worries about higher gas prices and a slumping housing market and proved their resilience over the Thanksgiving weekend, giving what the nation's merchants wished for -- a strong start to the holiday shopping season

[Tyler_JC]

I voted shoplifting. With gas rocketing past $3/gallon and food inflation in the double digits, how am I supposed to afford an iPhone?

Moreover, how am I going to pay for the Prada shoes, Gucci handbags, and Tiffany's bracelets that my baby needs for Christmas? She's got expensive tastes, what can I say...

[Don35]

This is not what I expected AT ALL! Wow! Maybe the deeper we go the harder we fall? I expected recession to official by January 1.

[DantesPeak]

I'm inclined to believe that totals were inflated by costly electronic goods, such as plasma TVs, they may actually be worth getting up 4 or 5 AM in the morning for - if they really wanted to buy one. However little do these buyers realize in just a few years that these power hogs will be unbearably expensive to operate.

Anyway, I think most people are disregarding the rising price of energy and falling home prices the best they can - and going shopping. My own completely WAG is that gasoline consumption is still higher than last year, and will generally continue so to the end of the year.

Reality won't catch up with most until 2008.

[Mo_Oil_Dave]

Hello there...

I really hate to be a soggy blanket....BUT, You are not taking into account INFLATION!

Sure they spent 10.3 billion more dollars, but they sure as heck didn't leave with 8.3 % more stuff. I may not be a math wizz but Ol' George Ure says you have to subtract everything by the inflation factor. (12-18%, according to the reconstructed M3).

So, in reallity it was actually 3.7 to 9.7 % less stuff carted off.

Some of you economic guys, help me out here.

David

[jato]

I went out and saw American Gangster (great movie). I didn't "shop". My friend around the corner from me bought a $900 television.

[Twilight]

I wouldn't make much of it. Let's see what the last days before Christmas are like. It's in the last 2-3 weeks of December that retailers make their cash.

Personally I will be waiting to see what the mood is like in February when people have paid (or failed to pay) their December credit card balance the previous month.

[roccman]

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com ) -- Although deep discounts brought out much bigger crowds of holiday bargain hunters, a major retail trade group said Sunday that shoppers actually spent less money this year over the crucial Thanksgiving weekend.

[dinopello]

I visited my parents, both 88. Shopping is a good outing for them. So painfully, I had to check 'went to the mall and watched'. But it wasn't actually 'a mall'. Also, gas was cheap there (2.80) so we drove around quite a bit.

I was crazy out though. One of the power centers has stores on each side of a parking and you can't see one store across the parking lot because of the 'curvature of the Earth' -kunstler - and it was pretty much full.

One department store (kohls) had a 50% off everything before 1PM and there was a two hour line. Addicted much?

Shopocalypse!

TOD:Shopocalypse

[joewp]

I think a lot of people blew their Christmas present wad this weekend, and sales from now on will be pitiful, causing retailers to offer deep discounts by Christmas week. Since I traditionally start shopping on the 23rd, I should save a lot of money.

[americandream]

Shopping therapy via that great benefactor, plastic. All hail the Plastic One!

[shortonoil]

Maybe “StorTrack” (I think, sp?) made a mistake. They did last year, and the year before that. They are the company that does the retail ratings for the large outfits. I think they monitor about 15,000 stores nation wide. Don’t be surprised if Reuters tells you tomorrow, or the next day that sales where down 3%.

[Armageddon]

They say this stuff to keep people's spirits up so they continue shopping. People are rushing to buy the dicounted crap right now because they don't have as much money. The numbers are a little misleading.

[Ardalla]

Bush has said Americans are addicted to oil. He might as well have said Americans are addicted to shopping. The science of making people want to buy and buy -- even when they really don't need to and it's not in their best interest -- has developed over the last few decades until the psychology of consumerism is well undestood and now people can't stop. We're going to keep buying and buying because that's what we do; that's what we have become.

[Zardoz]

You could lose a fortune betting against the American consumer.

Yes, Ardalla, that's what we do. That's who we are. Consumption defines us as a people. We've built our civilization on it. People worldwide envy the mountains of goods we pile up. They wish they were us. They want their own piles of stuff.

We have a reputation to live up to. We can't back off, even for a minute. As long as we have a credit card that somebody will accept, we'll buy something.

Only utter destitution can stop us. We'll keep on consuming right up to the bitterest, harshest end imaginable.

[SILENTTODD]

I dropped by a Target store friday and got some underware (for myself, I really needed it), does that count?

[Niagara]

So-called "Black Friday" is an important event, the point where retailers go into the black during the holiday shopping season.

It's a great economic indicator too. A weak kickoff to the Xmas shopping season probably spells doom for many retailers, some of whom are circling the drain.

Were the malls crowded in your neck of the woods?

I'm in Canada, our Thanksgiving is different. But living on the US border and with our weak dollar I didn't see any kind of shopping spree here in Niagara Falls. In past years our factory outlet mall would have been packed.

Pls share your local experiences...

[eastbay]

Local mini-mall is jam-packed today.

I did NOT shop at all, but the bank I use is on the corner of the mall and parking was impossible with SUV's and a few cars snaking and idling around in search of parking.

[dinopello]

Holy cow, I'm in Columbus Ohio this week and we went to some mall and it was excessively crowded. It seems the teenage girls are propping up the economy right now. Craziness.

[Minvaren]

I had to run by Home Depot to grab some parts to finish a project.

3x as many cars as usual. Funny thing, though - didn't seem to be a lot of huge purchases going on, just people with a half-dozen or so items.