This view, called "The Fall of the Mall," was in this morning's NY Times.
It's one view of what the recession looks like as seen through retail sales.
The theoretical mall maps below show 27 companies with stores or restaurants in malls across America. (In some cases, these companies own more than one chain of stores.)
In the bottom map, the change in the size of the stores is determined by sales in the first quarter of 2009 as compared to the same quarter in the previous year.
Color in the bottom map is meant to indicate the depth of the drop — or the height of the rise — in sales. The deeper the red, the steeper the loss.
Click on the image to make it larger or click on the link here.
The mere existence of that map shows the sorry state of free enterprise. Too much of the US ecomomy is in too few hands. It's not competition, it's oligopoly. I'm not going to cry for WalMart, Denny's, or the Cheesecake Factory, but for the small businesses they've put out of business along the way.
ReplyDeleteI'll cry for the people whose jobs (and homes, etc.) are lost, no matter who they work for.
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