Monday November 28, 2005

Thanks a billion

timesonline.co.uk :

Is America going to save the world again? Judging by what happened in the US on Friday - the day after Thanksgiving - they are making a damn good fist of it. Either that or the consumer is determined to go down fighting.

The earlier impression was that the consumer had been knocked out by higher petrol prices, heating bills, a cooling housing market and rising interest rates. But on Black Friday - so named because this day after Thanksgiving generates gallons of black ink for retailers - some 130m to 150m Americans turned out and spent more than the GDP of three-quarters of the world's countries.

Wal-Mart alone expected to ring up $2 billion (?1.2 billion) in sales. Parking lots at malls from Birmingham, Alabama, to Portland, Maine, were filled by the time the stores opened at 1 am ...

news.yahoo.com :

Reports of strong Black Friday weekend spending outnumbered scattered downcast reviews by Sunday afternoon, as U.S. shoppers crowded stores on a hunt for electronics and big discounts. A report issued on Sunday by the National Retail Federation, the nation's largest retail trade group, said the average shopper spent $302.81 this weekend, bumping total weekend spending to $27.8 billion - a dramatic 22 percent increase over last year's $22.8 billion.

(2005-11-28 14:52:37 SGT) [Biz] Permalink

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