Great hed and subhed on the
Forbes story about an anticlimactic announcement yesterday by the National Bureau of Economic Research: "Congratulations, It's A Recession," followed
by "Economists give birth to a 1-year-old downturn." Joshua Zumbun's story points out that the icebreaker at water coolers and supermarket lines now becomes: "Are we in a
recovery" yet?
No.
Unfortunately, literally, many consumer-driven sectors of the economy are still catching up with the bad news and making it even worse. But
that could also be construed as good news for bargain hunters. Take real estate. A
Wall Street
Journal article says that "home prices won't bottom out before the second half of 2009, and some don't see a bottom until 2011 or 2012. Even when they stop falling, prices may
scrape along the bottom of the rut for years."
Or take the travel industry. "Please!" they're begging. "Travel agents say cruising has become almost cheaper
than staying home," Martha Brannigan reports in the
Miami Herald. Because the industry has high fixed costs (fuel,
crew salaries and other operating expenses), the incremental cost of carrying each passenger is small. Hence, the discounts being offered by Carnival and the like are huge as they try to stay afloat.
Meanwhile, the
Chicago Tribune reports that site traffic at online travel agencies like Expedia, Travelocity and Orbitz Worldwide has taken a tumble. As consumer confidence
reached historic lows in October, the volume of visitors to Web travel portals declined 14% year over year, according to comScore data. Bucking the trend, Julie Johnson reports, were two sites that
help travelers drive better deals -- Priceline.com (up 24%) and Kayak.com (93%).
"In tough economic times, people care a lot more about the money they're spending," says
Drew Patterson, vp for marketing with Kayak.
If only it could be said that no one ever went broke stating the obvious, a lot of defunct marketers would still be in business today
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Read the whole story at Forbes, Wall Street Journal, Miami Herald »