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Sunday, November 23, 2008

Retail Therapy




Women call shopping Retail Therapy and we men all smile as though it’s a woman thing, until we come to realise that we have not personally bought anything for too long and we have the urge to go out and spend. Oh Dear!

Life is complicated, while at the same time it is so simple. In every country around the world we are controlled by the same emotions and urges and instincts. We need sleep; we need to eat and drink and pass time in the W.C. We need company, both intimate and platonic, and we need things. We must shop!

I don’t pretend to know a thing about how shopping affects women, that’s just too complicated for a mere man to understand. However, for some reason shopping malls are getting bigger and more sexed up to the point that they are a destination within themselves. In America, where shopping is religion, entertainment, and an absolute necessity, the ultimate in shopping opportunity resides in The Mall of America, located in Minnesota.

Normally, shops are located within a town where we park and go walkabout. Mall of America have gone over the top with the idea, and effectively they have built a town that they call a Mall. Here are a few facts:
- It’s such a grand size that 32 Boeing 747’s could safely be parked within it.
- Seven full stadiums the size of Yankee Stadium could fit within its perimeters.
- Walking distance around each level: 57 miles. There are four levels.
- If a shopper were to visit each store and spend no more than ten minutes, it would take 86 hours to complete a visit to all 520 stores.
- There are more than 50 restaurants plus another 36 speciality food stores.
- There are hotels at Mall of America.
- There are big entertainment centres in the mall.

This sounds like a super-size city to me. However, it was built on the premise that people would continue to live way beyond their means, and on credit. Getting credit was no problem. Credit card offers arrived by the bag full with pre-approval. In order to pay off parts of card purchases people simply took another card or borrowed from the bank. Then one day, as any junior accountant could have foreseen, came the reckoning. People with enormous debts could no longer pay the piper and the whole house of cards came falling down.

We now have a worldwide crisis and new words to ponder, such as “toxic loans” and “credit crunch”. Suddenly, all over the world the sky is falling. Banks are folding one after the other and mega-companies are in trouble, companies so large that they cannot be allowed to go into liquidation because the loss of jobs and assets would be cataclysmic.

So, what comes next? People still have to have stuff, and they must still obey their natural instincts. But our very way of doing business is being called into question. The jobless rate is about the only thing on the rise. We have lived with two major experiments for many years. They are the capitalist and the communist systems. The communist system has failed, as more and more of the former communist states become capitalist in their thinking. However, now we seem to be seeing our way of life showing major cracks. Where is all this headed? No-one knows!

Copyright © 2008 Eugene Carmichael