Flashback:
– Welcome to the Recovery (New York Times, by Timothy Geithner, August 2, 2010)
Recovery is the ‘GREATEST DEPRESSION’.
– Wal-Mart Says February Sales “Total Disaster”, Worst Monthly Start Since 2006; Stock Drops (ZeroHedge, Feb 15, 2013):
Wal-Mart shares are plunging as the firm reports a ‘total disaster’ in its February sales. Bloomberg obtained internal emails that note:
“In case you haven’t seen a sales report these days, February MTD sales are a total disaster,” Jerry Murray, Wal-Mart’s vice president of finance and logistics, said in a Feb. 12 e-mail to other executives, referring to month-to-date sales. “The worst start to a month I have seen in my ~7 years with the company…. That points to our competitive landscape, which means everyone is suffering and probably worse than we are”
It gets better:
“We have to fight against the tougher economic environment to earn a bigger share of a smaller consumer spending pie”
Obviously in WMT speak, “tougher” is what Obama would call “much better and rapidly improving.”
Things must not be serious over in Bentonville for this much truth to suddenly hit the tape.
One senior executive summed it up perfectly – “Well, we just had one of those weeks here at Walmart U.S. Where are all the customers? And where’s their money?” The company notes the end of the payroll tax cut by Obama and asks “We need to stop the stupid.”
How odd: why is WMT focused on such trivial anachronisms as “money”: can’t it just boost its multiple by promising 2022 sales will be stupendously marvelously humongous. It works for every other hollowed shell of a firm, gutted by Bernanke’s central planning.
Perhaps, just perhaps, some reality will finally come back to the market as a result of this disclosure.
When all the stockholders start asking for their money by selling off their stock, that will bring reality back into our economy. It will be brutal, but the day will be upon us soon.