Why Plumbers Matter

This article about the sorrows of Neiman Marcus, Saks and Nordstrom's points up the problem with ignoring plumbers and truck drivers. Last year I had to read a continuing flood of analysis that the top tier people were doing fine, and would carry the economy through the problems with the "subprime" class. The economic pundits told us over and over that these people were the big spenders who really mattered to the economy.But as we were discussing over here last year, the Saks shoppers are a derivative of the plumbers and the truck drivers, so when the plumbers and truck drivers have to be cautious at WalMart and aren't buying new cars, things are going to get sorrowful further up the shopping chain relatively quickly.They've gotten woeful now:At the beginning of 2008, Niemira said he had expected luxury same-store sales to... [read full story]