As a retail store, they'd have to significantly mark stuff down to compete with online stores. I'm surprised they're still so high though; I would have expected more of a fire sale.
It's one of the oldest retailing tricks in the book: advertise a fire sale, and then don't have one. There are people who will convince themselves they are getting great deals, regardless.
I think people are wising up. We are beginning to demand truth in advertising. When we are lied to, we are walking away. When we had lots of money, we would tolerate it, but not anymore. In times of surplus, we can act without reason, but in times of scarcity, rationality wins.
It was funny walking around the store -- like a bad garage sale. People would pick things up, look at them with this confused look on their face like they were thinking, "Are these people serious?" and then put it down and walk away.
People don't have any money. Where is the mystery? People want bargains and Circuit City has 1.3 BILLION dollars worth of inventory they have to move.
Marking up 20% then down 10% isn't going to move product. That kind of arrogance is why they are going out of business. I hope the other big boxes don't learn this lesson the easy way and they go out of business too.
It's sounds very cynical to say it, but I think the world will be better off without brick and mortar stores like Circuit City.
Actually, it makes me very excited to see them going out of business. I know it is painful for a lot of the employees and I don't mean to relish in their pain, but it's proof that rationality wins in the end.
The Circuit City bankruptcy is a metaphor for the U.S. It's a signal that the old world is dying and a new world is being born -- online. Consumers are being smarter about their money. They don't have anymore credit cards to max out, the housing ATMs are broken and people are wising up.
We're all going to be smarter and better and more rational after the fire. Slash and burn. Plant a new crop.
You have far more faith in people than I do. Something tells me within the next 5 years Americans will have forgotten about the whole "maybe spending way more money than I make is a bad idea" and things will go back to the way they were. Whenever I have to choose between lasting rationality and history repeating itself, I almost always choose the latter.
"Something tells me within the next 5 years Americans will have forgotten about the whole "maybe spending way more money than I make is a bad idea" and things will go back to the way they were."
There is historical precedent. While this is no Great Depression and I remain unconvinced it will become one, those who were bitten by the Great Depression were frugal not just for the rest of their life, but their children were relatively frugal too.
People can learn, and this is definitely one thing they can learn. On the one hand, this "crisis" (I am increasingly unconvinced this is a "crisis" and not just a "big recession") isn't quite as large, but on the other hand, it is increasingly easy to live a very good life on relatively small amounts of money.
Now my mind is going crazy with the "faith" part of it. Having faith seems naively optimistic and hopeful.
It feels right now like we, or at least I, need faith in something. God's not going to help us -- we might be the evil ones. Obama, while I like him /way/ more than any other president I've known, I have little faith that he will turn things around. I wanted Ron Paul. Obama is too soft, we need some of RP's tough love right now. Spending more money in the wrong places isn't the way to get our country out of debt and Obama has already shown that he doesn't understand that concept.
Who does that leave? The other politicians up there are still corrupt. CEO's are still greedy. Banks are still crooks. Retail outlets are still lying to consumers.
All we have left to have faith in are the people. I have faith in Hacker News. What a breath of fresh air this place is! It's the only rational place left on the Internet. Please PG, work your magic and keep HN sane!
Somewhere in "the people" is someone with the charisma and the intellect and the wherewithall to be a real leader. Obama is a leader and he is extremely intelligent, but lacking in the wherewithall...
Doesn't mean I don't like him. He was our best choice after Ron Paul. We need to find a Ron Paul the people can relate to. RP is too smart. Too rational. Too extreme for the media to support. The media are people too and they have jobs and their jobs are on shaky ground and they know it. They punished RP because the Internet that loved him hated the media and the internet also threatens the media...
In 4 years though, things are going to change. The Internet will be stronger. More truth will be available. The people will have better access to knowledge and resources they can trust. Someone, probably not Ron Paul, but someone as thoughtful and honest as him, though not so far outside the comprehension of the mainstream will take over the reigns.
Sounds like I'm going from faithful to hopeful.
Man, we gotta do something!! Obama isn't gonna do it by spending money and listening to the same people that have been making all the mistakes that got us into this mess!
Shoot, I'll do it! I'm going to get rich and buy ads and listen to people and travel around the country and talk to them and understand them and hold their hand when I tell them it's going to be really really hard and we are going to have to make sacrifices and trust rationality even if we don't understand it and move forward knowing that we have to make things real again. We have to get out of our grandiosity and look around the world and understand that we are people in a big world and we are just /one/ country and everyone is mad at us for being so arrogant and Obama has a lot of work to do and I love him and I know he is going to do better things for the country than that last guy.
I'm going to take it a little bit further and make it all better! I'm tired of people complaining and not doing anything about it. They say washington is corrupt and no one wants to get in that mess and they're afraid of getting killed by the military industrial complex.
Who cares!? I'm gonna die anyway. I'll go out with a bang!
I'm going to try it! If I don't make it, it'll be a fun ride. Going to make this place a better world and start right here at home. Someone's going to have to because we're in a serious mess people. A serious mess. This isn't going to be pretty. I don't think it's really hitting people how extremely f'ed up this place is going to get because of our greed and irresponsibility and hubris.
Maybe I have some of that too, but I /want/ it to be better, not just for Americans, but for the world and if we are going to be the leader of the free world, then by damn we better start acting like we are part of that world instead of swimming around inside this tiny little fishbowl...
I really can't understand why people are so fond of Ron Paul and how his positions would solve this country's problems.
Can you be more specific on what approach you believe should be taken to pull through this recession? What is so mislead about Obama's approach? What's The Ron Paul Solution?
I like Ron Paul because he is honest. He says the truth, even when it isn't in his best interest. When I listen to him, he says the things that I have come to believe over time through independent study and research regarding the world around me.
He has a solid understanding of world politics, economics, and history. He is literate and he reads a lot.
He's also a genuine guy with a huge heart. I think he'd be willing to do the hard things the nation needs in a time of crisis. He has a vision to the future. He is concerned about generations other than his own. He is concerned about the world outside his own home and he really wants to make the world better.
He's prophetic. He warned us that what is happening right now was going to happen and here it is. I think being able to predict the future and accurately analyze the current situation is something we want in a leader.
As for The Ron Paul Solutions that I would like to see implemented: responsible fiscal policy, libertarian ethics, ending imperialization, a focus on the home front, and shrinking of the size of government. Obama has none of that in mind.
What, specifically, is a responsible fiscal policy? How would he have prevented this economic mess? How does he suggest that we fix it, now that we're here? What economists support his views? Obama hasn't failed yet, how do we know his approach is wrong?
Responsible fiscal policy means spending less money. It means eliminating the IRS. It means the elimination of fiat currency. It means not spending money on guns, military bases, and other things that we just don't need.
Ron Paul gets his economic views from the Austrian School of Economics. There are lots of economists who agree with those ideas. Many popular economists agree with his views including Milton Freidman, Peter Schiff, and more... A lot of what Ron Paul believes about economics are well though out ideas presented by other people, they aren't ideas he just "thought up." For example, every fiat currency ever in the history of the world has eventually collapsed. Sure, the US Dollar may prove to be the one that doesn't collapse, but history doesn't seem to indicate that is the case.
Obama may be a shining star. I hope he is. Even if he is, even if Ron Paul was up there, we wouldn't know for sure if it was the President who fixed it or not. Bush did a lot of damage and the greedy bankers he enabled did a lot of damage, I'm not sure even Ron Paul could fix it. It'll take all of us working really hard to fix it.
We are so in debt it's unfathomable. The younger generation is going to have to work really really hard to get us out of this mess. Let's hope Obama can rally the troops!
Ron Paul subscribes to the Austrian school of economics. They're very much against central banks, fiat money, and the creation of wealth by fractional reserve banking. Implementing any one of those policies in such a time of crisis would be like treating a broken arm with a gunshot to the head.
A perhaps surprising result in public finance is that the optimal or the best way to tax capital income is not to tax it at all. Paradoxically, workers are better off with a zero tax on capital income. -Dr. R. Glenn Hubbard, the Chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers
I was referring to his other positions (abolishing most federal agencies, withdrawing from NATO/UN, negating Roe v. Wade/gun regulation, etc.) in addition to the IRS.
