According to Wikipedia, the Kennedy Expressway and the Dan Ryan Expressway are the busiest state maintained routes in the City of Chicago and its suburbs. I recall reading somewhere that the Dan Ryan ranked in the top ten busiest expressways in the country.
Well, for the second time in as many weeks, I had to travel cross town through Chicago to a suburb in the south, using the Dan Ryan. I was in a funeral procession. On a Saturday afternoon such a trip is normally a nightmare. Yet, on both occasions, I literally flew to my destination. Instead of 2 PM in the afternoon you woulda thought I was driving at 2AM in the morning. At one point there were no more than three vehicles in view ahead of me. On the return trip, I would normally travel the toll road. Wasn’t necessary, congestion was nowhere to be found.
Guy tells me that the Black Friday holiday shopping season began this weekend. Retailers are apparently eager to kickstart consumer spending. But the malls I passed had more than ample parking. Nobody seems to be spending. Even latest figures on Revolving debt, which includes credit cards, showed drop of $8.3 billion in September, the most since December 2009 according to the Fed. Times gotta be lean. Bloomberg even reported that wages and salaries were unchanged in latest reporting period, which represented the weakest reading since June. Real disposable incomes, or the money left over after taxes and adjusting for inflation, also fell 0.3 percent.
Retailers like Kohls, Target, Macys, etc are boosting seasonal hiring. I don’t blame them a bit. My guess is that the seasonal workers will probably spend most their paychecks on shopping, especially in the stores where they work, given the likelihood of employee discounts. It would be like a win-win situation and help contribute to inventory reductions and facilitate less post-holiday giveaways/mark-downs. Clearly, the consumer is trapped in a Howard Davidowitz moment. Fear in the air! And here it is, late Sunday afternoon, and the wife hasn’t even read the ad papers that usually fill the weekend newspaper.
I think it’s getting more and more ugly out there. Suspect that consumer spending still being severely constrained. This year, electronics will probably do well again, but some stuff should be a lot cheaper, as in too good to pass up. My computer tech guy tells me to expect huge discounts on monitors and Windows PCs. Gonna take a whole lot of discounting to have me part with my dough, they will virtually have to give it away. But that my indeed happen.
