Wednesday, January 09, 2008

Charts are Astrology


Like my title, I think charts are generally useless but when the long term chart like GGP going back to the 1990s looks like a textbook case of parabolic then head and shoulders with a compressed right shoulder decline even skeptics like me are given pause. Maybe there is some value in charting.

Someone I admire and recommend recently said:

We have also lowered the occupancy rates in the recession version expecting lowering demand for shopping space in the wake of falling retail sales and consumer demand

This was Reggie Middleton this week.

Ahhhh. I can sleep now that Reggie has revisited vacancies. Read his blog/website. Caution: There is absolutely no evidence of what I am about to say.
The US has at least twice the retail/commercial square footage needed for the modern economy going forward.
I know it will take many quarters, perhaps years to be proven right. I can wait.

I run my business literally from a shed in the backyard. FedEx and UPS don't have a problem. Paypal and Time Warner don't either. My clients could care less about an office front. Think about all the places you do business with. Do they need all the overhead they are carrying? We could stop building general purpose commercial/retail space for a generation and still accommodate a strong, growing economy.

8 comments:

wagga said...

And I run my business from the first floor of a two-storey house.

Rob Dawg said...

Face it Wagga, your cats run the business. Think about it. Do they work for you or vice versa? After you finish changing the box, letting one of them in/out and in again on their schedule and determining which food they will allow you to serve today you can get back to me with your reply. Why do you think the phrase is "code monkey" and not "code kitten?" Tpye monkey, type. The masters want new toys. ;-)

Legion said...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22571349/?GT1=10755

Katrina 'victims' sue, one joker is actually suing for 3 quadrillion dollars...yeah, we don't have a problem with too many trial lawyers in this country..what's the matter..those 2000 dollar credit cards get eaten up by the strippers and gucci bags?
Hey, my life sucks, I'm gonna sue the world!

Legion said...

That's why Edwards would make a great president, like this incident with the iranians, imagine how they will quake with fear when President Edwards retaliates with a lawsuit that would financially have them quaking in their boots..of course he will get his 50% cut, but we could sue every country that pisses us off and we'll have a balanced budget in no time!

Peripheral Visionary said...

The Internet is here to stay . . . so what are we doing with all this retail space? We should have less of it, yet we have, by some estimates, twice as much as even ten years ago? Makes no sense.

Some things will continue to be sold from storefronts--as Akubi has found out, there's something to be said for a grocery store. Also, it's nice to have places where you can pick up a spontaneous, last-minute gift (Hallmark won't be going out of business in the near future.)

One interesting thing to see in Europe was auto dealerships. They were small--very small. In fact, they were often nothing more than a showroom with a few "floor models." When customers want a car, they order it and it shows up a few days later. That's the way a lot of retail could go--a few floor models in a few stores for people to look at, but most ordering done online and most deliveries to the door.

That's going to leave a LOT of surplus retail space. Say, maybe they could just convert it all to Jamba Juice™. Sweet™!

Unknown said...

Dawg,

I have nothing constructive to add except to address a pet peeve - when you say "consumers could care less", that means they do care some. The expression you want to use is "consumers couldn't care less", meaning there's no possible way they could care even less.

Remember, some of your readers here are the same ones who go nuts when Snowflake confuses "loose" and "lose".

w said...

I run my business out of an extra bedroom and my truck. I used to work for a huge Fortune 500 and we had a big office, proprietary software, secretaries and so on. I was in awe at all of the dead weight. The funny thing is the dead weight used to whine about income discrepencies, but I make even more without them now.

Ogg the Caveman said...

So, who's the dead weight in Wagga's business? Him or the cats?