Walmart — 1 Billion Page Views On Cyber Monday, Healthcare.gov Dies Under 50k

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. ( WMT ) said it posted record online sales on Cyber Monday, while its Internet sales from Thanksgiving Day through Monday marked the retail giant's strongest five-day stretch of sales to date.

Wal-Mart's website processed more than a billion page views during the period, the company said in a statement.

"We had an all-time record sales day yesterday as the momentum we saw on Thanksgiving carried through to Cyber Monday," said Joel Anderson, president and CEO of Walmart.com U.S., although specific sales figures weren't provided.

Last week Wal-Mart, which launched its Thanksgiving Day deals two hours earlier than last year, said it had recorded more than 10 million register transactions between 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. Thursday in its stores and nearly 400 million page views that day on its website. The company said electronics, such as big screen TVs, iPad minis, laptops and new game systems Xbox One and PS4 were among the top sellers.

In addition to televisions and tablets, Wal-Mart said Tuesday that top sellers included Fisher Price Power Wheels Red Ford F150 Raptor Ride-Ons and Mega Bloks First Builders Build 'n Learn Table play sets.

Wal-Mart plans to offer 200 specials a day on its website through Friday.

The retail industry's main trade group earlier reported retail spending over Thanksgiving weekend dropped for the first time in at least seven years, as retailers kicked off sales earlier on Thanksgiving Day and touted discounts all week. Estimated total spending over Thanksgiving weekend fell to $57.4 billion, down 2.7% from a year ago, according to the National Retail Federation.

Shares were down seven cents at $81.04 in recent trading.

Via: Nasdaq
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Black Friday sales up just 2.3%

And that's with Thanksgiving day added to Friday's blowout.

How "black" retailers books are going to look is the real question. Prior to Black Friday, most big box retailers were bemoaning the fact that in order to get people in the stores, they used deeply discounted items. Typically, shoppers cherry pick the sale items and ignore the rest, reducing margins.

Bloomberg:

Retailers offered more and steeper deals on merchandise from flat-screen televisions to crockpots that, while luring shoppers, may ultimately hurt fourth-quarter earnings. Many consumers showed up prepared to zero in on their favored items while shunning the impulse buys that help retailers' profits.

"You could get the same deals online as you could get in the store, and yet there were still a ton of people out there," Charles O'Shea, a senior analyst at Moody's Investors Service in New York, said in an interview. Going out to stores, "is part of the experience," he said.

About 97 million people planned to shop online or in stores on Friday, with about 140 million intending to do so Thanksgiving through Sunday, the National Retail Federation said. That's down from 147 million last year.

Via: American Thinker

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BUYING GUNS ON BLACK FRIDAY BECOMES TRADITION UNDER OBAMA

Although much of the gun control push under President Obama has failed to result in new laws, it has succeeded in creating a new tradition where shoppers scoop up guns on Black Friday so they can place them under the tree on Christmas Day.

Consider the numbers: in 2008, ABC News reported 97,848 background checks on Black Friday. In 2009, the numbers remained somewhat static but then began to grow exponentially as the Obama administration and Congressional Democrats began to flex their muscles.  By 2011, there were 129,166 background checks on Black Friday alone. 

As the National Shooting Sports Foundation reported, the jump in 2011 marked "a 32.01 percent increase over" the sales on 2008 Black Friday--the year Obama was first elected.

In 2012, the number of Black Friday background checks rose to 154,873. Remember that because numerous guns can be purchased with each background check, these figures don't even begin to indicate how many firearms may actually have been sold. 

This information is not lost on retailers like Cabela's, Bass Pro Shops, and Wal-Mart. Cabela's literally gave away shotguns to early bird customers in some cities on Black Friday--those receiving the guns went through a background check--and Huffington Post reported that Bass Pro Shops was running hot deals on Bushmaster AR-15 rifles. 

Wal-Mart ran a "Manager's Special Sale" that translated into "20 percent off select rifles and shotguns."

Buying a firearm on Black Friday has fast become an American tradition under President Obama. 

Via: Breitbart

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Still Can’t SHOP On Black Friday

Instead Of Being Able To Shop ObamaCare On A Fully Functioning Website, Americans Get Another ObamaCare Delay

DAYS BEFORE OBAMA SAID THE WEBSITE WOULD BE READY, HIS ADMINISTRATION ANNOUNCED ANOTHER MAJOR OBAMACARE DELAY

The Obama Administration Announced A One-Year Delay Of ObamaCare’s Small Business Exchange. “The Obama administration today announced a year-long delay of online enrollment for small businesses looking to purchase health coverage through federal-run exchanges, another setback for HealthCare.gov.” (Jason Millman, “Online SHOP Enrollment Delayed By One Year,” Politico, 11/27/13)

• Previously, The Obama Administration Said The Small Business Exchange “Would Be Ready By The End Of November.” “The delay, first reported by POLITICO, comes just weeks after Obama administration officials said the online enrollment for small businesses would be ready by the end of November. The announcement also comes just three days before the White House promises HealthCare.gov will provide a smoother enrollment experience for most users trying to purchase individual and family coverage. Fixing the problems with the individual market has been the White House priority.” (Jason Millman, “Online SHOP Enrollment Delayed By One Year,” Politico, 11/27/13)

Wednesday’s Announcement Before Thanksgiving Was Reminiscent Of Obama’s Delay Of The Employer Mandate Ahead Of Independence Day Weekend. “The announcement of the delay, just before Thanksgiving, is reminiscent of the way the White House announced, just before the Independence Day weekend, a one-year delay in the requirement for larger employers to offer health insurance to employees.” (Robert Pear, “Online Health Law Sign-Up Is Delayed For Small Business,” The New York Times , 11/27/13)

AFTER OBAMA’S ASSURANCES THAT THE WEBSITE WOULD WORK, THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION HAS DOWNPLAYED EXPECTATIONS

Barack Obama: “[A]nd By The End Of This Month, We Anticipate That It Is Going To Be Working The Way It Is Supposed To, All Right?” OBAMA: “And the website is already better than it was at the beginning of October, and by the end of this month, we anticipate that it is going to be working the way it is supposed to, all right? And folks are working 24/7 to make sure that happens.” (President Barack Obama, Remarks By The President On The Affordable Care Act , Dallas, TX, 11/6/13)

Via: GOP.com

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[CARTOON] Holiday Shopping

Via: California Political Review

Black Friday 2013: Walmart Becomes #Brawlmart

It’s that time of year again: Black Friday. Millions of people gather at various retail stores to push and shove their way to a $98 TV set or a 50%-off iPad.

As usual, things got ugly in some places. So ugly that hashtags #Walmartfights and #Brawlmart had thousands of tags overnight.

One video went viral showing an unidentified Walmart full of shoppers swarming a discount item and fighting, shouting, and shoving to get out of the crowd. Police even swoop in to take down a shopper who got physical:

Another #Brawlmart tagged item showed a video of a Walmart in Mayaguez, Puerto Rico. As the “This was a nice try at crowd control… but then,” one twitter user said, teasing a video showing a stampede-like crowd storming the doors:

#Brawlmart also spread to Fort Worth, Texas, where this video shows shoppers getting frighteningly rough reportedly over a DVD player, a Garmin GPS, and a variety of other items:

And in Rialto, Calif., a fight broke out over line-cutting in the parking lot of a Walmart before the store opened:

Via: Mediaite.com

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The Day After Thanksgiving - Black Friday

Black Friday Online Sales Now!

Sears · Kohl's · Express · Amazon · Aeropostale · Nov 27, 2013

Black Friday has begun! Many stores have already gone online with their Black Friday deals, with more going live tonight all the way through Thanksgiving. Be sure to check back often so you don't miss the sales!

Updated 08:20am EST  ****TARGET, WALMART, BEST BUY, BEALLS, GAMESTOP, HOME DEPOT, RADIOSHACK BLACK FRIDAY SALE NOW LIVE***

SELECT ITEMS AT DELL AVAILABLE NOW

Via: Black Friday.com

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Black Friday union strikes against Walmart likely to fizzle

The “widespread, massive strikes and protests” targeting Walmart on Black Friday will almost certainly fall flat, says one union watchdog closely monitoring the labor group planning the pickets.

OUR Walmart, a close affiliate of the massive United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW), is threatening the big-box chain with crippling strikes and angry crowds during next week’s crucial Black Friday sale unless the company raises worker wages.

The planned strike, along with a series of smaller pickets preceding it, have been heavily hyped in the left-wing media. “We do expect [the protests] to be larger than last year because we have so many more members and so much more community support,” the head of a labor advocacy group told the Huffington Post on Thursday.

The Daily Caller

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Andrew Huszar: Confessions of a Quantitative Easer

I can only say: I'm sorry, America. As a former Federal Reserve official, I was responsible for executing the centerpiece program of the Fed's first plunge into the bond-buying experiment known as quantitative easing. The central bank continues to spin QE as a tool for helping Main Street. But I've come to recognize the program for what it really is: the greatest backdoor Wall Street bailout of all time.

Five years ago this month, on Black Friday, the Fed launched an unprecedented shopping spree. By that point in the financial crisis, Congress had already passed legislation, the Troubled Asset Relief Program, to halt the U.S. banking system's free fall. Beyond Wall Street, though, the economic pain was still soaring. In the last three months of 2008 alone, almost two million Americans would lose their jobs.

The Fed said it wanted to help—through a new program of massive bond purchases. There were secondary goals, but Chairman Ben Bernanke made clear that the Fed's central motivation was to "affect credit conditions for households and businesses": to drive down the cost of credit so that more Americans hurting from the tanking economy could use it to weather the downturn. For this reason, he originally called the initiative "credit easing."

My part of the story began a few months later. Having been at the Fed for seven years, until early 2008, I was working on Wall Street in spring 2009 when I got an unexpected phone call. Would I come back to work on the Fed's trading floor? The job: managing what was at the heart of QE's bond-buying spree—a wild attempt to buy $1.25 trillion in mortgage bonds in 12 months. Incredibly, the Fed was calling to ask if I wanted to quarterback the largest economic stimulus in U.S. history.

Via: WSJ

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Macy's to open on Thanksgiving, breaking 155 year old tradition

Macy's is breaking a 155 year old tradition of staying closed on Thanksgiving.
This year it will open some of its stores at 8:00 pm on the holiday.
         
The change will reportedly only effect locations in New York and Chicago.
         
In the past, the department store has opened at midnight following Thanksgiving.
         
Recent surveys show 91 percent of Americans plan on looking for those Black Friday deal.

Via: MyFoxDC

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