The bigger they are the harder they fall
The bigger they are the harder they fall...Just like the dinosaurs, giant retailers like Walmart, Nordstrom, Macy's, Staples, Whole Foods and many others may soon face extinction!
The following are 13 major retailers that are closing down stores...
#1 Sears lost 580 million dollars in the fourth quarter of 2015 alone, and they are scheduled to close at least 50 more "unprofitable stores" by the end of this year.
#2 Sports Authority will file for bankruptcy in March. News reports have indicated that around 200 stores may close, but at this point it is not known how many of their 450 stores will be able to stay open.
#3 For decades, Kohl's has been growing aggressively, but now it plans to shutter 18 stores in 2016.
#4 Target has just finished closing 13 stores in the United States.
#5 Best Buy closed 30 stores last year, and it says that more store closings are likely in the months to come.
#6 Office Depot plans to close a total of 400 stores by the end of 2016
#7 Wal-Mart is closing 269 stores, including 154 inside the United States.
#8 K-Mart is closing down more than two dozen stores over the next several months.
#9 J.C. Penney will be permanently shutting down 47 more stores after closing a total of 40 stores in 2015.
#10 Macy's has decided that it needs to shutter 36 stores and lay off approximately 2,500 employees.
#11 The Gap is in the process of closing 175 stores in North America.
#12 Aeropostale is in the process of closing 84 stores all across America.
#13 Finish Line has announced that150 stores will be shutting down over the next few years.
These store closings can be particularly cruel for small towns. Just consider the impact that Wal-Mart has had on the little town of Oriental, North Carolina...
The Town'n Country grocery in Oriental, North Carolina, a local fixture for 44 years, closed its doors in October after a Wal-Mart store opened for business. Now, three months later -- and less than two years after Wal-Mart arrived -- the retail giant is pulling up stakes, leaving the community with no grocery store and no pharmacy.
Though mom-and-pop stores have steadily disappeared across the American landscape over the past three decades as the mega chain methodically expanded, there was at least always a Wal-Mart left behind to replace them. Now the Wal-Marts are disappearing, too.
On Thursday we got the latest evidence that the global economic wheels are falling off. According to new data from the Netherlands Bureau of Economic Policy Analysis's World Trade Monitor, global trade (defined as the value of goods that crossed international borders) plunged nearly 14% in 2015.
That's the first contraction since 2009.
The figures also come amid growing concerns that 2016 is already shaping up to be more fraught with dangers for the global economy than previously expected.
The global economy is in very deep trouble and it's just a matter of time before the worldwide deflationary supply glut gets "liquidated" - literally...
Essentially it all comes down to this:
In order to have a thriving middle class, we need good paying middle class jobs. Unfortunately, our economy has been bleeding those kinds of jobs quite rapidly. For example, Halliburton just announced that it is eliminating 5,000 more jobs after getting rid of 4,000 workers at the end of last year.
During the Obama years, good paying middle class jobs have been getting replaced by low paying service jobs. At this point, 51 percent of all American workers make less than $30,000 a year.
And there is no way that you can support a middle class family with children on $30,000 a year.
We have an economy that is in the process of failing. We can see it in the explosion of subprime auto loans that are going bad, we can see it in the hundreds of retail stores that are shutting down, and we can see it in the tens of thousands of good paying energy jobs that are being lost.
Now an economic downturn that will ultimately turn out to be even worse than the "Great Recession" of 2008 and 2009 has begun, and our leaders have absolutely no idea how to fix things.
I wish I had better news...
Get prepared now, because very rough times are ahead,
Charles Hayek
Retired Economics Professor