Bickel Blog

I walked into a friends office yesterday and he called me "Mr. Gloom" as he was watching the Dow fall 250 points and hit levels last seen in 1997. So I thought I would pass along some good news... The running store's sales for this February vs. last February are up over 20%. I'm not sure if this is a leading indicator or just a freak of weather or what. The same is true at our two sister stores in South Jersey. I was also talking with another friend this weekend, and he made an interesting observation. He said that while there were people losing their jobs, most people had not been affected in their income level. Meaning that for over 90% of the population, nothing has changed except their 401K statements. The fact that their house is worth less does not really impact their day-to-day "Income Statement". We speculated that people were saving a bit more than they did and building up a cushion, but in the long run this was kind of healthy. Anyway, some...

I have had this thought in my mind that the economy seems to be contracting about 10%. I was reminded of this as I awoke to my radio (KYW) news that the Pennsylvania State Revenue was 11% below expectations. They reported Sales Tax was off 7%, Personal Income Tax was off 13%, corporate tax was off 18%, inheritance tax was off 10% and real estate transfer tax was off 35%. This matches the performance at the running store in January - we were down 10% excluding our recently opened website - RunningCompanyShoes.com . It kind of makes me think that maybe we got 10% ahead of ourselves the past decade. People took out too much credit, and basically extended the economy more than it should have naturally grown. Now that we take the 10% step back, it is very painful. It is painful for the 10% of the workforce that is getting laid off. It is very painful for the states and other government organizations to be coming up 10% short of their revenue projections. And of course businesses g...