Well the annual how-great-everything-is hype about Black Friday retail sales is getting underway. No matter what happens, we know for sure that sales will be better than expected - they always are. It is pretty tiresome as the retailers and their shills - the moral equivalent of the NAR - try to pump up the “keep up with the Joneses” urge. The choice tidbit for me so far was:

“I’m really looking for the bargains this year because I’m losing my job,” said Tina Dillow of New Richmond, Ohio, who camped out at a Best Buy store near Cincinnati at 3 a.m. because of a great deal on a laptop. “They’re moving our plant to Mexico after the first of the year, so I have to be careful.”

Yes, right, Tina, being careful means saving money by buying a new laptop? If it weren’t so sad it would be funny.

Edit: And here comes the hype. “According to ShopperTrak RCT Corp., which tracks sales at more than 50,000 retail outlets, total sales rose 8.3 percent to about $10.3 billion on Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, compared with $9.5 billion on the same day a year ago. ShopperTrak had expected an increase of no more than 4 percent to 5 percent.” Never mind that ShopperTrak doesn’t track sales. They track traffic, using video cameras and image processing software. Then they project sales based on the traffic.” This is typical economic propaganda. ShopperTrak is guessing what people spent and then reporting it as fact.

Thanks to Calculated Risk., we hear Merrill Lynch’s David Rosenberg has committed himself to the recession camp:

With the tally now encompassing 90% of the companies reporting, third-quarter earnings per share dropped 8.5% from the third quarter last year. … David stresses that profits drive the business cycle — capital spending and employment feed off them. And he sighs: “It has always been thus.” Hence, he’s ineluctably forced to the conclusion that a recession in the economy “is either here or no more than two quarters away.”