The music stores except the one regional chain are each down to the owner or manager and open only 6 to 9 hours a day. Dillards, The Gap and SunCoast Video are closing at the mall and the Old Navy scheduled to have opened in October never did. My father said half the new car dealers have closed over the last two years. My sister, a dental tech, said all the area offices are cutting hours.

Vegas was a horrible mess when I Ieft in October. The local paper reported local unemployment running 17%. Shows were cutting back to one a night. Gambling revenues were down across the board. Penn Jillette posted a tweet before xmas that Rio may close their show soon and they didn't do a New Years Eve show at all.

So . . . what's it like in your community?

I don't know. I haven't been outside in two and a half weeks. I s everything still there?

(actually, at the famous used bookstore, over the past few months, the amount of people selling has gone way up, if that means anything.)

I think it's really hard to "see" economic statistics in retail settings.

For example, here's a Bloomberg article on US holiday retail forecasts. The projection is that holiday sales will come in 1-2% behind last year's results. That's the worst result in four decades and, I believe, the only negative year since they've been measuring. The number sounds small, but it has a big impact.

Of course, 1 or 2% isn't really that noticeable in person. Especially since most of the decline comes not from volume, but from reduced spending per person or reduced prices. If every consumer spent $100 at Christmas last year and this year they all spent $90, that's still the same number of people in the parking lot and queuing up at cash registers. But a 10% decline in overall holiday sales would be calamity--there would be a massive wave of retailer bankruptcies.

Anyway, I didn't really notice much in Arizona, where I spent the holidays with my parents. But I wasn't out at the malls either. I was surprised that a 4:30pm weekday showing of Gran Torino at the biggest screen in the city was totally sold out.

Anecdotally, this Christmas was definitely more... restrained among my family. We got the same number of gifts, I suppose, but more "hand thrown pottery cups" (which are beautiful) and fewer "$100 coats from L.L. Bean." Seriously, one family friend received a handful of coins, circa 1980, as a White Elephant gift.

On the other hand, 'Dude and I are doing pretty well and he decided to "treat" the economy by buying a modestly-sized HDTV (he's in school on a nice grant and I'm in a recession-proof industry). I'm sort of scared, though, that an upcoming life change and move cross-country will make our current optimism seem misplaced.

I don't have a community.

Today, I went to the mall and Target to take advantage of deep discounts. One store I went to is in the final days of a going out of business sale. Another store had some great deals (a Waldenbooks), and when I got rang up they told me it was because that location was going out of business in a few weeks. The mall was pretty crowded with the mall walker contingent though.

I don't really get out much, but I know that my homie who lives in a super wee town in NY said that she's noticed many fewer people at the mall and more at the library and the park.

Where I am down in MD, I noticed that the day after Thanksgiving, the shoppers seemed to be more restrained. There were plenty of people, but there were fewer bags.

Well, I live in a city that has become the poster child for the economy, or at least the manufacturing sector. The GM plant isn't the only one closing, and we have the highest unemployment in the state. To be sure, both Madison and Milwaukee were just on the Forbes list of cities with tighter job markets right now, and overall the state is doing better than many.

The retail sector had been doing pretty well right up to late last year, with several new stores and restaurants as well as planned redevelopment downtown (where a summer flood depressed business for some and increased it for others). But there have been a plethora of rumors about this or that store or restaurant closing, which has actually hurt business.

One thing is clear, we have record enrollment at the local community college and technical college. But just down the road, my expensive liberal arts alma mater got in the papers because of an enrollment shortfall that caused them to lay off 10% of staff.

It's hard for us to tell personally much right now, as we're going through a family financial crisis. But there are a lot of foreclosures in the paper, a lot of for sale signs in the neighborhood, and for rent signs seem to stay up an awfully long time.

It varies around my part of Los Angeles. We went into several stores after Xmas, and a number were weirdly deserted (like post-neutron-bomb level deserted) while others like Target were at a normal level of busy-ness. Restaurants/cafes seem to be following a similar pattern -- lower priced places are doing regular business, while more expensive or specialized places seem half-empty.

Parking lots (that perennial Los Angeles measuring stick) are also notably easier to navigate -- even the week before Xmas, during which I would usually prefer to sell one of my nephews into slavery than to try to get a parking spot at a mall, parking was fine.

We had a much more restrained holiday season, too: I bought one present each for my nephews, Harry & David baskets for my parents and my boyfriend's parents, made some food bank donations, and that was about it. My boyfriend and I decided not to get presents this year for each other, and instead used a gift card (from last year!) and some cash we'd been gifted to buy some much-needed stuff for the house (new rug for the living room, new pot rack for the kitchen, etc.). I must say, it was far more low-stress and pleasant this way!

Here in Poland, there's a whole national dichotomy which lines up pretty crazily with all kinds of things; the last parliamentary elections pretty much show a Jesusland/United States of Canada thing going on between the more free-market-oriented, more prosperous, more progressive northwest/west/southwest of the country (orange), plus the cities of Krakow, Łodz, and Warsaw (which is the richest region of the country, where per capita income per year is close to €19,000), and the rural, poorer, far-worse-off economically east (blue) - in Lubelskie per capita income is just €7800 a year! Creepily, the prosperity line pretty much follows the partition lines through which the Polish state was divided between Prussia, Russia, and Austria.

I've also heard that lots and lots of Poles working in more prosperous - but more recession affected - parts of Europe, like Ireland and Britain, are coming home.

Here's a data point for you.

We're in supposedly one of the better faring regions for a recession - central NC - there's a lot of biotech & tech & pharma here. I'm in the design industry, and there are pockets of designers who are very busy, others are thumb twiddling. It has definitely affected construction starts, both commercial and residential. A lot has been put on hold. And people of all stripes are having their jobs "eliminated".

And to piggyback on chewatadistance, here in Fayetteville, altho real estate sucks right now (and I suspect it's not a great time to be selling cars either) we do have the Army which, shall we say, ain't laying off anybody. A lot of the wives/spouses are choosing to stay here rather than move home to be with family of origin.

And the flower business was really booming this Christmas. Today was the slowest day we've had since I started working there over a month ago...but I suspect maybe part of that is we are the oldest and most established florist here in town. Other florists might not be faring quite so well.

(And both I and my daughter (the single one) both got our jobs within the last few weeks. We feel blessed.)

And because it's such a buyer's market, real estate is starting to show tiny glimmers of hope here. After all, soldiers gotta live somewhere.

Real estate is weird, especially at the level I work with because most of the clients buying at our level can totally afford to buy and/or can totally get good rates on mortgages. Of course, the whole Ponzi scheme thing is making a mess of things now, too and we really won't know the effect of that for at least two more fiscal quarters. And, one of our brokers had 45 people at one of her weekend open houses where the price is between $600K and $800K.

I never thought I'd say this, but I totally feel sorry for everyone who got duped by this asshole. Yes, even the super-rich ones.

The German government has been incapable of actually doing anything about the recession, but stores have been mobbed with people buying shit.

Apparently,dhartung, Weer in ur platz, steelin ur jobz.

I think the headline of the article you linked, eekacat, is exactly what the future economy holds. The whole spending frenzy that was the last decade or so was the anomaly. We are now going back to normalcy. It's not nearly as exciting, but somehow it's almost a relief to get a break from the overheated economy. Not that a recession is good, but you just knew the spending couldn't last forever.

but you just knew the spending couldn't last forever

...unless you were Alan Greenspan, evidently.

It goes beyond personal spending, Doohickie. It's also about debt, and not just personal debt, but corporate debt as well. Corporations are running on such narrow margins that things like "just in time" inventory are essential to keeping those margins. Everything is on such a razors edge that it doesn't take much to upset the whole cart. There is no room for error. That's why just a couple percent drop in sales at Christmas (which the retail sector depends on heavily) is such a big deal. As long as things are going steadily, companies can operate. A slight downturn is painful, and a larger one is disastrous. We'll continue to see a shake-up as poorly run companies too close to the edge fail. At least two of the big three auto makers honestly should have gone out of business, and they'll need government help beyond a bailout.

Here's an article about Waterford Wedgwood filing bankruptcy, and the itulip analysis of it.

TrishaLynn, I agree with you. While I'm jealous that rich people have access to better money managers, no one deserves to be ripped off like this. Sure investing with Madoff, in hindsight, made little common sense, the con in con artist is for confidence, and this guy sold it well. Apparently he was the best ever with 50 billion he bilked from people.

We've had serious cutbacks at work, and there may be more. The local housing market has been affected, thought not as severely as in other areas. Loans are much harder to get. Godwill is more crowded with shoppers. But, yeah, restaurants & bars are still busy, there's plenty of people at the movies, etc. Given that my retirement account took a big hit, and that my job is not as secure as I'd like, my spending is plenty cautious. I don't shop all that much, but I certainly am buying less when I do shop. Except that I'm still going to renovate my kitchen, cause it's desperate. But I've saved for it.

The housing market has stalled for older homes, but building is still going on, just slower. At work, all new projects are canceled unless we can get grants to pay for them. There are fewer people at the big stores, and more at the dollar stores.

Oh, funnily, post my earlier comment, the local paper has an announcement of store expansions at the local mall -- including a supersized Victoria's Secret. But there are multiple storefronts there that have remained empty a while, too.

Doohickie: It's sad that a number of commenters on my local newspaper's site reflexively blame NAFTA, even though GM also closed plants in BOTH Canada and Mexico. And they seem unaware that Toyota is also having trouble moving product.

Personally, we've had to cut back but that was not due to the recession. That was because my ex-husband went into an extended rehab and has stopped paying child support. That was a big hit to our cost of living, so things have been tight because of that.

That said: My brother-in-law is a union plumber. With the lack of new construction going on, he has seen his hours shrink to 25 a week. On the other hand, my brother, who owns his own plumbing company (just him and one other guy) is doing okay with remodeling jobs and regular work. I do have friends out of work who can't find any; they cut some hours from where I work; my husband's company isn't giving out any raises this year; there are homes for sale all over the place here in South Jersey, most have been listed for a long time. The job listings in the newspaper is only two or three pages long. One of the stores we know of is in a well-to-do area; suddenly the shoppers there are cost-conscious where in the past money was no object.