Hmmm....malls low on shoppers, and nor perhaps credit card crunch...

Walking around the malls the past few weeks has been sort of interesting. I was trying to guage the amount of Christmas buying.

Initially I saw plenty of people walking around....but I noticed something interesting....not as many people carrying bags and bundles.

It looked as though people were not buying as much as they used to...or at least as far as I could see.

I have to admit that this is a sample of only 4 days of shopping...and only in 2 malls. A very poor sample for such a statement.

But I ran across this article today and wonder if my observations might not actually be more generic .

Sounds as though people are starting to feel the credit crunch in their credit cards....not just their sub-prime mortage being ARM's up on them. I suppose it's all part and parcel of the same thing....people in debt.

What to do though...where to invest. That is the $64,000 question I suppose.

Private initiative to save people from forclosure and prop-up the mortgage market.

I'm not sure about the meltdown part....though the economy does seem to limp along very badly right now.

But I just read a BLOG that pointed at this article where there is a move a foot to freeze ARM interest rates in order to save many more form going bankrupt.

Sounds like an interesting idea.....we will see what it does to the housing market though....some people will still go under when they can't see their houses in order to move for a job.

What a wonderful situation we have right now.....yuck!