Retail sales worst in 4 decades?

Holiday Sales are down this holiday season, but you already had assumed that I am sure.
But the sales were the lowest in 4 decades acc. to this Bloomberg.com report.
Not only did people shop less but indications are they shopped for discounted goods and cheap stuff, meaning lower margin stuff for retailers.
This means many retailers will report very bad numbers during earnings.
So why is all this spending so important?
That's because the US is a consumer economy, meaning around 70% of the economy is consumers spending money and when the consumer does not spend money that makes the economy bad. Why is the US a consumer economy? because as you see most things we buy here are not made is US , they made in China or some other country.
This is the primary reason many economists and the govt. are calling for stimulus packages to jump start the economy. They argue if the consumer spends , the economy will come out of the recession.
But there are the others who argue that spending ( mindless spending ) is what got us in trouble in he first place.But this a subject for another time.
The US consumers, on an average are usually in debt. Which is what the companies like. In fact many "experts" argued why save? "Saving is for other countries" , yeah right.
So now that signs are that US consumers are paying down debt and trying to save that's sending ripples in the markets.
That is also creating problems in China and other countries which supply primarily to the US consumer.
I will cover more on this later but for now lets see how the retailers come out with their report cards. AMAZON.com came out with great news this morning, click here for the marketwatch.com story. But Amazon is basically a discount internet retailer. Different model altogether.
I went to the mall on Wednesday and the mall near me was packed, no parking ( that could be an mall issue, less parking spaces ) , lots of jams. So it looked ok.
I stepped into a jewelry store and had to wait for someone to show me stuff, so they were selling stuff. But this is also the place where house prices have not come down much at all.
Well we will know soon.