The Coming Recession

Remember back when Walmart reported higher sales we said that this might be due to the trickle down effect.  As consumers are tapped out, more of them are going to Walmart to save money.

On Wednesday, we've had Macy's and Nodstrom cut it's fourth-quarter outlook.

Today we have Fedex cutting it's earnings outlook.   Part of the cuts were due to 8% increase in fuel costs (I am not sure what they are talking about because accordning to October PPI, energy prices were going down).

Starbucks also said that it's traffic in its stores fell for the first time since the company started keeping this figure.  And it lowered it's earnings and same-store-sales-growth estimates for 2008. 

As I have said before, everyone has pronounced the American Consumer dead many times before. But now you are starting to see some signs that they might be actually slowing down.  We've talked about the consumer credit at it's highest, housing market in shambles (taking away Home Equity Withdrawals along with it).

HSBC is confirming our earlier article about consumer credit being the next bomb. 

"Early stage delinquency rates in both cards and branch unsecured lending are also showing signs of deterioration" as falling house prices squeeze consumer income, HSBC said in a statement.

Wells Fargo is finally saying what we all know - Housing market is worse since the great depression.  Just imagine how bad it must be for a bank to quote something like that.