Over the years the retail community has kept track of what people most want to receive at Christmas time or on their birthdays or at some other gift giving occasion. In the past fifty to sixty years this data gathering has varied in its quality but there have been some consistent observations. The receiver of [...]
Holiday sales have started out strong across the board. Thanksgiving weekend sales were up about 16 percent over last year, and sales yesterday were up about a third over last year. Yesterday’s online “Cyber Monday” sales figures were about 30 percent higher than Black Friday’s online sales. While increasing year [This content is for MEMBERS [...]
The annual meeting of the UN’s Climate Change group takes place in Durban, South Africa this week and already the diplomatic focus is essentially damage control as there is very little expectation of any substantive agreement coming from the meeting. If anything, the issues that divided the major players are more pronounced than ever. The Europeans are [...]
The Indian government is currently waging a fierce debate over whether or not to loosen their allowances for foreign ownership of retail stores within the country. The current Congressional coalition recently passed an executive decision that [This content is for MEMBERS ONLY. Please Subscribe to continue.]
This was the message that President Obama gave to the leaders of the EU in an informal summit at the White House. The meeting’s intent was not all that clear but it seemed that the European leaders were relieved to be out of Europe if only temporarily. The President indicated that the US stood ready [...]
The storming (or taking) of foreign embassies is not new in Iran. President Reagan was introduced to the world scene amidst an embassy and hostage crisis – and it set the tone for his 8 years of service. The storming of the UK embassy last night in Tehran could be another one of those moments [...]
Recent data shows that volumes of shipments from China to Europe have plummeted – much worse than what we see from the United States. The question that we will have to confront moving near the end of the year and into the first quarter of next year is how resilient the banking and consumer sector [...]
A couple of days ago there was some commentary by some of the economic community around what would happen if Congress fails once again to do anything to bolster the economy. The powers that be have three more chances to get engaged this year and most analysts expect them to fail at all three. There [...]
More than 30 trade unions will join 1.4 million government workers to protest austerity measures aimed at helping the British Government balance its budget. With more than 2 million workers taking the day off, there are expected to be significant backlogs in every aspect of the country’s operations, airlines around the world have already pre-cancelled [...]
It is not that the Germans are not affected by all this. Obviously the linchpin to the rescue of Europe is in Berlin. What is interesting is that the most significant part of the German economy is essentially ignoring the mess in the southern regions of the continent as they get on with their business. [...]
