Anyone care to venture a guess or provide inside information on how the retail shopping season will go this year?

With everything looking so rosy, I would guess that it will surpass expectations and surpass last year. So, I’d guess good but not great.

People (even unemployed people) still have credit cards and this may be the last year for a while where people actually buy a lot of stuff on credit. I can see people thinking “the economy is recovering, it’s Xmas, and I still have some room on my card, so what the heck.”

I still think a second recession will hit us in Q42010 or Q12011 as the government tries to demonstrate how healthy the economy is by pulling alot of the stimulus away mid next-year, but for now we borrow and spend for a couple quarters.