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Black Friday...The phrase has an ominous tone to it, especially after the gloom sweeping the financial markets in recent months. Stocks have been on a roller coaster ride, trending downward,
banks have been writing off billions in bad debt, with the greatest losses yet to come, the dollar has been in a freefall, losing 40% of its value in recent years, Pakistan is in turmoil as Musharaf suspended the constitution,
declared martial law, rounded up judges and lawyers, and restricted the press. Nothing like taking a wrecking ball to democracy to make us all feel more secure in this world. Bush frets over Iran, but the only real nuclear
threat from an Islamic country is now Pakistan, home to Bin Ladin himself. With all that bad news, Black Friday does seem a little ominous this year, but to retailers across the US the meaning is sweet.
The Friday after Thanksgiving marks the occasion were Americans, fattened up from their Thanksgiving feasts of turkey, ham and roast beast, awaken to the realization that they have three days off and
nothing to do but snack on leftovers or watch parades or football games on TV. So, with the mandatory purchases of Christmas looming, they head to the nation’s shopping malls by the millions and start those cash registers
singing alleluia! After laboring long and hard all year, the resulting surge in business for retailers finally takes them out of red ink and into the black. And it’s all brought to you through the complicity of paid
advertising and feature news, a harmony that will see the news channels prepping the story, sending field reporters first to the airports, to watch us all board our flight to grandma’s house, then to the malls to cover
specials on this season’s latest gift crazes.
But this season may not be so black for retailers. The credit crunch arising from the fraudulent mortgage deals of 2005 and 2006 has finally hit home. With cash hard to come by, and tighter lending
standards, Americans can no longer ride the refinance merry-go-round. The ATM machine is closed, and the purchasing power is now largely governed by Visa, Mastercard, American Express and Discover. They are already deep in
debt, and it will be interesting to see how much room is actually left on the plastic this year as shoppers head to the malls. With oil hitting $99.27 a barrel, (11/07) and gasoline nudging $3.50 a gallon; with food prices
spiraling up, medical care astronomical, the cost of keeping your house heated in the colder weeks ahead looming like a dark cloud, will shoppers make merry this year in the big box stores?
Face it. This is the American
way, or at least it has been for the last 50 years or so. It’s what we do here. We shop. And the stores have been waiting oh so long for us this year, whispering their slogans like mantras, night and day. Tis the season
of indulgence, where we are all supposed to make a list of things we want to buy. This “wish list” is, in many ways, the heart of the so called American dream, which has largely been about the upward migration from
one social class to another, through the acquisition of wealth. Unfortunately, we can’t all get rich, or the system would collapse, so instead of providing a real path to wealth for most people, our system has substituted
the gratification of shopping and the endless product staircase of the upgrade, a notion made almost reflexively desirable now because of our symbiotic relationship to computers. Many of us have taken the ride from
the C64, to an IBM clone that ran at a whopping 10mzh, and on up through the ranks. Upgrading was just keeping in step with the march of progress and the rollout of new technology. The concept has applied readily to things like
cars, stereo equipment, appliances, and of course, the most ubiquitous electronic device in our homes—the TV. Soon, say the corporate communications wizards, the entire broadcast signal is going to change to High
Definition, and hundreds of millions of Americans will be out shopping for new HDTV panels of plasma and liquid crystal delight. But while the old analog sets cost around $299 today, the new sets will check in at much heftier
prices. The size of your budget will determine the size of your screen, and you can bet that a new set is on many an American’s “wish list” this year.
Negative news stories
give way at this time of the year so the media can focus on its primary mission--fattening up the profit margins of the corporations that own the newspapers and TV stations. What is it about the US News media that makes them think Americans are only interested in stories that would fascinate a 12 year old with 4th grade reading skills? On any given day you will find our media awash with trivial stories that have no real information, and focus on no issue of any consequence. They are pure fluff, celebrity news, color stories involving a single individual, trivia from our entertainment sector posing as “news.” Take a look at the fare offered up by CNN on their home page of Nov, 26th, 2007:
CNN: Latest News
* SI: Redskins' Sean Taylor critical after shooting – Who cares?
* Police
believe they've ID'd 'Baby Grace' – Who the hell is “Baby Grace” and why should anyone need to know?
* Dutch man to face judge in Holloway case – Oh God, not the little lost girl on Aruba again…
*
WGCL: Guard, robbery suspect shot at mall – National News? Stuff like this happens 1000 times every day!
* CNNMoney: Nissan recalls 686,500 sedans – They should all be recalled, and we should start building trains.
*
Bush optimistic ahead of Mideast summit – Since when has anything inside the head of Bush been relevant?
* CNNMoney: Online shoppers may set record – Yes, record debt that will cause unending pain and suffering.
*
Ankle-deep drifts fuel Texas snowball fight – Wow, let’s cover this fight and forget the war in Iraq.
* Ticker: Chuck Norris becomes campaign star – No comment.
* Boy, 6, hears mom mumble,
saves her life - But who will save the rest of us from this cute and cuddly “news?”
* Immigrant risks freedom to save boy's life – Good for him – just not national news.
*
Teacher arrested over toy bear – Forget about the multi billion dollar financial crime spree now underway.
* David Beckham ignored us, sick kids say – Like the media ignoring real news? And who is David Beckham?
*
Meet the CNN Heroes finalists - Again…Who in God’s name cares about this trivial TV show?
CNN International offered up these tasty headlines, all completely irrelevant to the massive crisis looming on our near horizon, and now underway.
* UK's skin bleaching trade exposed – What is this nonsense getting top story for?
* Meredith: Lawyers want new autopsy – Who is “Meredith” and why should we care?
*
Diana: 'No signs of pregnancy' – Diana…always a nice seller.
* French youths torch police station – Like they torched most every city last year?
* Seven die in Brazil
stadium horror – Tragic, just not news.
* Workers rescued as oil rig burns – As our entire energy system burns...
* Iranian Phantom jet in sea crash – Really?
*
Police ID girl found dead in box – Earthshaking!
* Pavarotti's widow sues for $44M – Is That All?
Those were the “Top Stories” of the day, while CNN conveniently overlooked these headlines gleaned from the Internet that same day:
* General Economic Meltdown Now Underway. (Counterpunch.org)
* Freak Show of Financial Derivatives Taking Down the Economy (James Kunstler)
* New Wave of Mortgage Failures
May Create Economic Nightmare (Biz.yahoo.com)
* The U.S. Economy is in a Full Blown Meltdown (Market Watch.com)
* Financial Dominoes are Falling Fast (USA Today)
* Big Banks Now Feeding on Each Other Like Hoardes of
Vultures (Asia Times)
* How the Subprime Collapse Foreclosed the American Dream (UK Telegraph)
* Why the Housing Dream Died Hard (Newsday.com)
* The Shopping Season Can't Stop the Coming Economic Collapse
(Alternet.com)
* The Fall of the Dollar will Have Profound Effects (UK Telegraph)
* American Economy Now Wrapped in Anxiety (NY Times)
* Hoarding of Money Points to Crisis in the Banking System (UK Independent)
*
Cracks are Spreading at the Mortgage Giants (The Economist)
* Is Your Bank at Risk of Failure? (ABC News)
* $6.5 Trillion Dollar Financial Tsunami About to Hit Wall Street (Global Research)
* Report on the Implications
of Peak Oil (Science Blog)
* House prices could fall 30% (nytimes.com)
* Behind Freddie and Frannie's Free Fall (biz.yahoo.com)
* Freddie, Fannie Shares Will Continue to Slide (bloomberg.com)
* U.S. housing
outlook sends dollar to record low (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
* Even average houseowners feel rising mortgage floodwaters (marketwatch.com)
* Prisoners of Debt (businessweek.com)
* Freezing Mortgage Rates Will Fail
(Mish Shedlock)
* Have we seen worst of mortgage crisis? (news.yahoo.com)
* Credit 'heart attack' engulfs China and Korea (telegraph.co.uk)
* The Vultures Descend (Foreclosure Watch)
* The Source of the
West's Water is at Risk (Alternet.com)
* Worldwide Drought with No Contingency Plan (AZcentral.com)
The lesson: major news media is completely disconnected from reality. It does not seek out real
information, present any real news, but rather serves primarily as an entertainment media, a distraction, a complete fantasy about what is really happening in the world, the nation, the economy.
Instead of information about the steep decline of oil production, CNN ran a nifty “green” story that showed an enterprising mechanic swapping out the engines of Hummers and massive
SUVs with a more efficient diesel engine running on vegetable oil. It promised to move the MPG rating from 7 to 24 miles, but the underlying message was far more profound--that we will simply modify our existing overweight and
inefficient cars to get a little more mileage, and this will cure all our energy needs. Keeping the cars running is the absolute necessity implicit in the story, for we are not planning any other alternative, nor will we have
one ready when the real energy crisis hits. So this story, thinking to be a solution-oriented, “green” idea, became nothing more than a tribute to the almighty automobile. It totally overlooked the fact that
bio-diesel solutions would have to plant a land mass the size of Africa to produce even a fraction of the energy now provided by gasoline. But the car is king in this country, and to make the point in the most blatant way possible this “green” story was followed by coverage of a trade show for the wealthy where a Mercedes was rolled out with the entire hood inlaid with an intricate pattern of diamonds.
Oh, how we love our cars, and how we will struggle mightily to anoint them and keep them all on the road. This is perhaps the greatest delusion preventing us from making the changes we so desperately need in this country.
This year it will be business as usual, with delusion, denial and the long wish list of the American Dream broadcast 24 hours a day--just so we all know it’s Christmas time.
In the cute little slogan most companies
end each ad with, Meryvn’s asks us: “What’s on your wish list?” Sears really doesn’t care. They’ve found an adorable little boy voice to simply exhort us to “Wish Big.” We
will. Most people’s wishes will start with at least a 26” to 35” set, and go up from there. We are so inundated with advertising, with one tag line slogan after another, that it’s hard to sort them
out at times. Since Americans do a lot of traveling this season, Hertz tell us to “Rent wisely.” Kay’s Jewelers wants us to know that “Every kiss begins with Kays.” Wal-Mart continues to carp
“Always low prices. Always” and of course to pay for it all, Discover card reminds us that “It pays to Discover.”
Millions of Americans will take that old familiar ride again this
year…to the plane or car, to grandmother’s house we go. To the table laden with turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and all the rest; to the TV to get our dose of entertainment and holiday sale hype. Then comes Black
Friday. In 2005, when this article first published, I saw spots on the news where the mall was setting off naval klaxons in restless anticipation of the start of the buying binge. Other ads showed a Marine drill sergeant
rooster bursting in on a sleeping couple and rousting them out of bed. There were overhead shots, the sort you see during high speed freeway chase stories or fire emergencies, only this time they were covering the merchandise
crazed shoppers lining up outside malls as early as midnight before the big event. Apple sent its customers wake up e-mail alerts to be sure they were ready for the iPod races. The Internet, it was touted, was being used like a
military GPS tool to allow shoppers to pinpoint rock bottom prices on merchandise, right down to the zip code. News analysts on the financial channels put up pie charts showing buyer demographics and how much they planned to
spend. They ran retrospective stories showing the shopping crazes from years past, like the vaunted cabbage patch doll, and asked “what will it be this year?” Reporters pulled aside early arriving shoppers to get
their stories, some driving two hours to reach the big malls. “It’s tradition,” one said. “It’s the holidays.”
We will have to see if tradition has given way to reality this year. The strength of the 2007 shopping season will have a lot to say about the onset of a recession. If the mall traffic is subdued
this year, there will still be lots of red ink on retailers books. Then we will be in a situation where corporate America is literally awash in red ink--in the debt that is slowly destroying this nation and our vaunted way of
life.
Well, the stores are waiting for you. They will be open as early as 4am on Black Friday to kick off this season’s glee, and you had better be there. Our way of life depends on it, because if you
don’t go shopping, you’ll change the meaning of Black Friday to something else, something far more dark and dangerous. If your wish list isn’t big, if you don’t go shopping, then all hell could break
loose. Stores that wait for Black Friday all year, and the cash rich days that follow until about January 6th, will be oh so disappointed. They’ve laid in the stock, goods purchased from factories in China, India,
Indonesia, and lots of other off shore manufacturing sites where people work for pennies on the dollar. They’ve shipped everything over here, to big distribution centers where fleets of trucks will roll it out to
thousands of big box department stores as they suck down the ever more expensive diesel to get from there to here. They’ve hammered out their tag line slogans, bought all their ads, prepped the season in handy news items
through the media stations they own. One news spot even showed malls with “shopper relief stations” set up, sporting bottled water, extra shopping bags and other FEMA like emergency shopping supplies... for the
marathon has begun. Now it’s your turn.
You will go out, get in your car, drive to the mall, and you will shop. You will take out your credit cards, and you will swipe away all those savings you think you’re
getting by piling on more debt—all at 19.99% interest or higher. And you will do this because all the powers that be in America say you should in order to be a responsible citizen. Vote? Nope. The one thing you must do in this society is buy. It’s infectious, reflexive, conditioned behavior. The hunt for a one day sale is a kind of blood lust in America during the holidays. We, who have oh so very much; we who burn up over a quarter of the world’s consumable energy each day; we who live in hyper inflated overpriced homes hawked by over zealous bankers, we are all addicted to the old maxim “shop until you drop.” But this time many of us will drop. No. I’m not talking about an Al Qaeda suicide raid on Macy’s. We’ll drop dead in our tracks when the bills come in next January, and the final phase of Option ARM resets rolls out for millions of ”homeowners.”
Still, in spite of that, I predict that Americans will indeed hit the malls, and the plastic, very hard this season. Some have thought otherwise. A few articles ago I presented a piece about
the prophets who were predicting a great collapse
the prophets who were predicting a great collapse
. You would hardly think there was a quiver of anything wrong out there with all the cute and cuddly ads that are getting us ready for the marathon shopping race.
Black Friday is upon us, and corporate America is holding its breath. They will know by the end of the day if their discounts were deep enough. They will know if the registers ring out our second national anthem, and the
profits pile up. Black Friday is the litmus test for the season. If sales are soft, knees quake in the boardrooms, faces pale, fingers start pointing, and heads eventually roll, like the CEOs of Countrywide and Citibank, and
other financial houses awash in bad debt. You are supposed to buy. You had
better
buy. Or else someone gets fired…someone doesn’t fit in. If you don’t buy the stores must lay their clerks and stockers off.—and then
they
won’t be able to buy. You get the point.
.
You would hardly think there was a quiver of anything wrong out there with all the cute and cuddly ads that are getting us ready for the marathon shopping race. Black Friday is upon us, and corporate America is holding its
breath. They will know by the end of the day if their discounts were deep enough. They will know if the registers ring out our second national anthem, and the profits pile up. Black Friday is the litmus test for the season. If
sales are soft, knees quake in the boardrooms, faces pale, fingers start pointing, and heads eventually roll, like the CEOs of Countrywide and Citibank, and other financial houses awash in bad debt. You are supposed to buy. You
had better buy. Or else someone gets fired…someone doesn’t fit in. If you don’t buy the stores must lay their clerks and stockers off.—and then they won’t be able to buy. You get the point.
 Yet there are places
, people, where the insanity of constant consumption has been seen to be the great malaise of our time that it actually is. There are people who know that the
plastic baubles, nylon clothing, electronics, toy robots, perfume and other things that will pile up under Christmas trees this year are nothing more than signs of our inevitable decline.
One internet based group called “Adbusters” is touting the international “Buy Nothing Day” event that is scheduled to coincide with Black Friday—a revolutionary idea if ever there was
one. In fact, to corporate America such an idea is far more dangerous than anything stewing in Bin Ladin’s head could ever be. Buy nothing? The thought is one to freeze the blood of the
showroom sales guys. Finance nothing? What would the real estate lenders do? Still, across the globe this Friday
, millions will participate, going one 24 hour day without buying a single thing. While it may seem as futile as resisting the Borg, it nonetheless makes a statement that there is something profoundly wrong with a society that
requires this constant consumption in order to validate itself.
I, for one, will make this Black Friday my buy nothing day, and I think I’ll eat a little more modestly, and mindfully
this year. Yes, I’ll be very thankful for all the good things we have in this country, but ever mindful of so many
millions who have nothing at all. And I have finally realized that there is something inherently immoral in a one day
blowout sale, so this year, I’m just not buying. Sorry. Not me. Certainly, if you are in real need, you must purchase
the things required to live. But many of us are so far beyond that need level that 80% of what we buy is pure luxury,
pure upgrade, pure indulgence. I saw a news spot showing trendy gifts, and one was a clever see-thru watch with a
$20,000 price tag. Another showed an ad for a $77,000. handbag. Still another touted the uniqueness of a “His &
Her photo booth” for a cool $20,000, and a rideable train set for $100,000. The thought that there are people out there who would buy such things was, to me, appalling.
What made things worse,
was the immediate juxtaposition of a news story that claimed charities are feeling a pinch in donations this year, and some are 75% behind their goals. Rent assistance programs are 69% behind.
Food assistance programs are 59% behind. Medicine assistance programs are 40% behind. The smiling-chatty
-airheaded-blonde news anchor on FOX exclaimed that people are just suffering from “charitable fatigue” and asked:
“aren’t they just too tapped out to give?” A bewildered priest tried his best to ask the media to cover the need in
America. Right, Padre, thanks for the tip. Now it’s on to the malls where we’ll spend the next hour covering the shoppers—all those folks with charitable fatigue who are just too tapped out to give any more to the needy. After all
, it’s the holidays, a word that used to mean “holy days.” Aside from that single priest appealing for charity, all I
saw of religion in the coverage was a jam on the new craze in righteous computer gaming, where Christians will be
out to slay Biblical demons and other evil things. It’s nice to see the violence of a 3D shooter put to spiritual uses.
So am I trying to make you feel guilty? Perhaps, but I realize the futility of trying to supplant pleasure with guilt.
The obvious truth is that shopping, eating, indulging is pleasant, even if it is thoughtless and unnecessary. You will always, always catch more flies with honey than you will with vinegar. That was the lesson the marketers of
Capitalism proved to the oppressive regimes under Communism. But if a little mindfulness, a little guilt, helps you
to moderate your desires this season, so much the better. I know it is nigh on to impossible to stop the flow of commerce in its tracks and substitute a frugal morality at this time of year. Still, a little judo in the process, that is,
turning that drive to acquire and consume to some good end, might work. With all the preparations the big retailers
have made, and all the hype, consumers should realize one thing unequivocally—shoppers have power. Yup. You may be manipulated, coaxed, conditioned, cajoled and incentivized to death, but you still have power. The things
you choose to buy, or not to buy, will determine the direction of the markets. If you want inefficient, gas guzzling
SUVs and you buy them, Detroit will keep making them. If you want economical, fuel efficient hybrids, and demand them, that’s what you’ll get.
Thinking about shopping that way for a moment introduces a ray of hope that doesn’t have to be centered on
shame and guilt. You can realize that the buying choices you make will determine what will succeed or fail in the
market of the future. Want some loony talking plastic doll that is really good for little else but quick summer landfill
? Buy it. Want products that are environmentally friendly, energy efficient, made from recycled goods, innovative in
the way they solve a need or problem? Buy them, and you’ll get more. You have that power, to shape the future landscape of our malls, and the society that feeds on them.
Beyond that, when you go out to the malls this year, you can exercise a little mindfulness and ask yourself: is this
something I, or the person it’s intended for, really need? This gets at that old cliché of Dad opening up one gift
boxed tie after another on Christmas morning. I’m consistently amazed, for example, at how people who really
know me well fail to realize that I don’t need any more books. (Oh, I love them, but there are already six books on
my evening reading pile, enough to keep me going for a while, and what I really need is, well, socks and shirts.)
So one thing you can do is focus a bit less on the magical “wish list” aspect of Christmas, and instead see it as a
time of fulfilling other people’s real needs. For some people a book, perhaps containing a viewpoint or information
that is both challenging and informative, might be just the thing, for others it will be a sweater. Doing this matchmaking better will shorten the other lines that are so typical of the season, as people turn out in droves the
day after Christmas to make exchanges and gift returns. So if you simply must shop, shop smarter, and think need
fulfillment instead of wish fulfillment, for the years ahead will be entirely about need. The magic wish of America is
fading away. Necessity, reality, the imperative of finding a new and sustainable way of life, will be the great challenge of 2008.
I was fortunate enough to become acquainted with the difference between necessity and indulgence as a young
man when I volunteered to teach school in a Yupik Eskimo village for three years. The cold Alaskan weather made me keenly aware of how dependent we are on heating systems to survive. The isolation, where all food had to be
flown or barged in, allowed me to live in a place where the walls between civilization and nature were very thin. I wrote about it this way in my novel, Steamboat Slough:
“The cold in Alaska is something that never quite leaves you, even if you flee to warmer climes in the south.
Once you have experienced it, your life is never the same. It's a cold that reminds you of your frailty and vulnerability to the forces of nature, for without the layers of warm clothing, a parka, wool cap, mittens and
the all important cold weather boots, you would die in a few minutes if exposed to the elements at even mild temperatures like 10 below zero. The environment pressed in on you from every side in Alaska. The
immense scale of the land was simply too big to be cowed by man and his sprawling concrete cities. It was humbling, and strangely invigorating to live in a place where the boundaries between life and death were a
little thinner, and the comfortable padding of civilization was replaced by a down vest and a good wolverine ruff on the hood of your parka...
The generator room housed two diesel generators, each taking turns through the long winter days,
constantly rattling and churning as they thrummed away to provide the power the mission needed for light and heat. If one failed in the winter it would be imperative that the other start up within an hour. Any longer
would freeze the water in the thin pipes that fed the radiators in all the buildings and they would run a high risk of bursting. If that happened, the mission would have to close.
Daniel caught the scent of crude diesel oil as he started up the steps. Oil was the fuel the generators drank
down each day. Wood Man would haul them up from the barrel farm down behind the warehouse on the river’s edge. He would winch them up on a hoist and slowly feed the thick black blood into the greedy
machinery to keep everything turning. There was always a barrel up on the rack to feed the generator that was running. Without it, he thought, all would fail. Men covered themselves with layers of clothing, and
huddled behind insulated walls and double paned glass, but without the pulsing drone of that machine, and the oil it fed on each day, all would be lost to the cold thick blackness of the night.
It was a microcosm of the world, he thought. One day the fuel barge would not come up river from the sea,
and the oil would run out. The trees would all be cut down, and the Great Empty would open its maw and devour us all. One day…but not today.
Now he knew why nearly forty percent of all the houses in the village were long abandoned, and why the
young people fled from the small town sites, hoping to find a thicker wall, a heavier parka in the cities of Anchorage and Fairbanks. There were more generators there. If one went down, chances were that another
would quickly take its place. There were wider boundaries there, and the border lands between real life and the world spun from the shadowy shaman’s tales their grandfathers once told them were well guarded.
In the city the lamppost light gleamed along the frigid roadways, and the haze of civility blended with the ice
fog to screen off the auroras. In the city the horns and grinding wash of passing traffic would drown out the lonesome whistles of the natives if they ever saw the Northern Lights. In the city the dogs all slept inside on
warm porches, and the pale glow of television screens lit the heated rooms and masked the raspy voice of their grandfathers with its ceaseless chatter.”
Most Americans have long since abandoned rural life to live in our cities. All our services are provided there, food,
water, gasoline, heating oil, and a steady stream of electronic media over radio, TV and the Internet. In Alaska I
learned to live without running water for a full year, taking a “sponge bath” once a week. I learned to live off salmon,
much of it caught within a few miles of the school where I taught. I learned just how important that barrel of oil was,
and what necessity was, and just how very much of the life I had in the “lower 48” was pure fluff. It was a lesson
that has guided my thinking about the hard times ahead, and a population here that has grown soft with the expectation that they will always be protected by the thick walls of our civilization, a population that has never
really stared into the face of what Jack London called “The Great Empty.”
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