Your problem is due to one or more of these three reasons:
1) You read the headline, but not the article.
2) You read the article, but you are the poster boy for reading
comprehension problems.
3) Numbers 1 and 2 are false, but you posted your nonsensical message
because you're hung over from the weekend and just felt like making waves.

The actual article simply says that mall merchants had vastly different
experiences than the big discount chains. It discusses trends, and does not
suggest that mall sales results are an indication of the retail economy as a
whole.

The New York Times
November 28, 2005
Mall Stores See Trouble in Sales Data
By MICHAEL BARBARO

As the nation's retail executives began poring over, and in some cases
despairing over, sales receipts from the holiday weekend, one pattern became
clearer: consumers mobbed discount chains, with their $398 laptops and 5
a.m. openings, but largely shopped right past other specialty retailers at
the mall.

The disparity, analysts said, could indicate a tough season ahead for
clothing retailers like Gap and Aéropostale and even deeper discounts for
shoppers as the chains scramble to build momentum in the crucial approach to
Christmas.

ShopperTrak, which measures purchases at 45,000 mall-based merchants, found
that sales for the day after Thanksgiving fell 0.9 percent from last year,
to $8.01 billion, a figure not adjusted for inflation.

"The specialty guys just got outgunned this time around," said John D.
Morris, a retail analyst at Harris Nesbitt.

The winners, he said, were the discount chains with locations outside the
malls, apparently the beneficiaries of an 11.4 percent increase in weekend
spending among Visa USA cardholders. Wal-Mart reported that a record 10
million shoppers walked through its doors before noon Friday. In a recorded
phone call over the weekend, the company said Friday sales "exceeded plans"
and that consumers continued to shop after the early discounts expired.

One possible explanation for the in-the-mall, outside-the-mall discrepancy:
discount chains, led by Wal-Mart, blitzed consumers with advertising well
before Thanksgiving, opened their stores even earlier than last year and
offered the most talked-about discounts, like a $188 15-inch flat-panel
television at Circuit City and a $77 H.P. four-megapixel digital camera at
Staples.

The mall-based merchants, on the other hand, largely avoided circulars or
television advertising. Gap, in a surprising break with tradition, stopped
marketing its marquee brand on TV after years of aggressive campaigns with
stars like Sarah Jessica Parker, Missy Elliott and Joss Stone. (Gap, saying
store traffic "deteriorated beyond anticipated levels," is predicting a
relatively weak holiday.)

It appeared that the Web snatched at least some of the traditional mall
business. ComScore Networks, a market research firm, said online purchases
rose 22 percent for the day after Thanksgiving, to $305 million.

Later mall openings may have also hampered specialty retailers. "If you look
at the retailers that went all out on Friday, many of them opened at 5 a.m.
You did not see a lot of malls doing that," said Ellen Davis, a spokeswoman
for the National Retail Federation, an industry trade group in Washington

Karen MacDonald, a spokeswoman for Taubman Centers, said most of the
company's 23 shopping centers did not open until 8 a.m., three hours after
bargain hunters sprinted into Best Buy, Circuit City and Wal-Mart.

Discounting at mall-based stores nevertheless may have lowered their overall
sales for Friday, said Bill Martin, one of ShopperTrak's founders.

For the day after Thanksgiving, the Gap ran a "buy one, get the second half
off" promotion; American Eagle Outfitters offered 15 percent off before
noon; and by Saturday Aéropostale marked down much of its inventory 50
percent.

At the Aéropostale in Manhattan Mall on Saturday, where striped hooded
sweaters and distressed denim appeared thoroughly picked over, Damaris
Torres, 23, bought a pair of jeans, regularly $50, for $10. "It's like
basically free," she said.

The 50 percent off sale "is really, really good" agreed Yomhyra Martinez, a
15-year-old from Boston, who stood in line at Aéropostale to buy two hooded
sweaters because "most of my friends own hoodies."

Despite a slower-than-expected start at the mall, the National Retail
Federation stood by its forecast for the holiday season yesterday. It
expects sales to rise 6 percent over 2004, which would make this year's
performance good, but by no means great. Since 1999, when sales grew more
than 8 percent, merchants have learned to live with more modest gains.

In a survey of more than 4,000 consumers over the weekend, the federation
found that 61 percent made purchases at discount retailers, 47 percent at
department stores and 41 percent at specialty stores. Over all, it estimated
that the weekend's spending would rise 22 percent, to $27.8 billion.

A handful of department stores proved a bright spot at the mall. J. C.
Penney, whose sustained turnaround has surprised analysts who long ago
predicted the death of the midtier department store, said Black Friday broke
a record for customer traffic and sales. "The day clearly exceeded our
expectations," Ken Hicks, the chain's president, said in an interview.

But customers showed little interest in paying full price. Inside Macy's
flagship store in Manhattan, a whirl of gold ornaments and red carpets,
customers waved 20-percent-off coupons at the checkout counters. Marilyn
Rivera, a 37-year-old single mother, bought two pairs of cowboys boots:
designed by Jessica Simpson, for herself; the other by Nine West, for her
daughter, both 50 percent off.

"The deals seem to be better than other years," said Ms. Rivera of the
Bronx.

It was unclear how much of the increase in spending by Visa users was simply
a result of more shoppers with new debit and credit cards. The company said
purchases of computers and electronics, a category ShopperTrak largely
overlooks because the biggest sellers have moved out of the malls, rose 20.6
percent.

Spending on home furnishings, meanwhile, jumped 14.1 percent. "You don't
make those kinds of purchases if you are not feeling somewhat comfortable
with your financial position," said Paul Cohen, a vice president at Visa.

On Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, that comfort was apparent. Kathleen McLean, a
41-year-old lawyer from South Dartmouth, Mass., split four bags from
American Girl Place with her husband. Neatly packed inside were two pairs of
pajamas, one for her niece, the other for her niece's American Girl doll.

"I kind of went overboard," Ms. McLean said.

* Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company