Welcome To The New Normal: The Dow Crashes Another 390 Points And Wal-Mart Closes 269 Stores
By Michael Snyder
TheEconomicCollapseBolg.com
January 15th, 2016
Did you know that 15 trillion dollars of global stock market wealth has been wiped out since last June? The worldwide financial crisis that began in the middle of last year is starting to spin wildly out of control. On Friday, the Dow plunged another 390 points, and it is now down a total of 1,437 points since the beginning of this calendar year. Never before in U.S. history have stocks ever started a year this badly. The same thing can be said in Europe, where stocks have now officially entered bear market territory. As I discussed yesterday, the economic slowdown and financial unraveling that we are witnessing are truly global in scope. Banks are failing all over the continent, and I expect major European banks to start making some huge headlines not too long from now. And of course let us not forget about China. On Friday the Shanghai Composite declined another 3.6 percent, and overall it is now down more than 20 percent from its December high. Much of this chaos has been driven by the continuing crash of the price of oil. As I write this article, it has dipped below 30 dollars a barrel, and many of the big banks are projecting that it still has much farther to fall.
The other night, Barack Obama got up in front of the American people and proclaimed that anyone that was saying that the economy was not recovering was peddling fiction. Well, if the U.S. economy is doing so great, then why in the world has Wal-Mart decided to shut down 269 stores?…
Walmart (WMT) will close 269 stores around the world in a strategic move to focus more on its supercenters and e-commerce business, the company said Friday.
The closures include 154 U.S. locations, encompassing Walmart’s entire fleet of 102 ‘Express’ format stores, its smallest stores that have been in pilot testing since 2011. Some supercenters, Sam’s Club locations and Neighborhood Markets will also close, plus 115 stores in Latin American markets. The closures were decided based on financial performance and how well the locations fit with Walmart’s broader strategy, says Greg Hitt, a company spokesman.
We have grown accustomed to other major retailers shutting down stores, but this is Wal-Mart.
Wal-Mart doesn’t retreat. For decades, Wal-Mart has been on a relentless march forward. They have been an unstoppable juggernaut that has expanded extremely aggressively and that has ruthlessly crushed the competition.
The Rest…HERE
