Where is the US economy headed?

JCP has a fair amount of cash on hand. They have been reducing the losses for the last 4 quarters.

JCP just named a new CEO. When did they announce plans to try to replace him? Once again, you show us you don't have a clue what you are talking about.

Stores began extending Black Friday to try to bounce back from the recession. Now, however, they have trained consumers to expect a constant stream of price cuts, and are jockeying for first place in a fiercely competitive race. The discounts may help stores reach the forecast of up to 4 percent revenue growth for the 2014 holiday season, but margins will suffer.
“I think sales are going to be OK this season, but how profitable are the sales going to be?” said Jim Rice, vice president at research firm Creditntell.

In addition, according to estimates from WalletHub, JC Penney had a higher average discount of about 65.4% on Black Friday compared to the sector’s average of 39.5%. The discount activity from JC Penney was even higher than the average discount of 63.5% from rival Macy’s, Inc. (NYSE:M). The aggressive promotional activities and high discounts can negatively impacted JC Penney’s gross margins, and result in the retailer missing fourth-quarter expectations for gross margins

J.C. Penney is trading about 5 percent lower Wednesday morning after Goldman Sachs downgraded its stock rating to “sell.”

Reasons: Its analysts don’t like several aspects of Penney’s third quarter results and said they believe competitive changes in the industry from off-price retailers and online will prevent management from achieving its multi-year outlook. Goldman said Penney’s same-store sales are growing slower versus its peers, it’s lagging on e-commerce growth and trends in core categories like home are weak.

Goldman Sachs changed its price target to $5.50 a share.

“While we were hopeful that JCP’s return to its “old” strategy would recover a sizeable portion of lost sales, recent results lead us to believe competitive changes in the industry from off-price and online will prevent management from achieving its multi-year outlook.

“We expect future earnings misses and corresponding downward revisions to consensus estimates,” said the report released Wednesday before the market opened.

Many analysts were concerned by the National Retail Federation (NRF)'s estimate that holiday sales fell 11 percent during the holiday weekend (Thursday through Sunday) from a year earlier.

But others, including Gerald Storch, former CEO of Toys R Us, contested the data. "I don't believe any way whatsoever sales were down 11 percent over the weekend," Storch, now CEO of Storch Advisors, tells CNBC. "That number is a bad outlier."

However, he admits, "it's not as good as people like."

Storch notes the NRF survey results are unreliable because they are based on consumer polling and self-reporting conducted halfway through the weekend. Consumers estimate what they will spend for the rest of the period.

The survey showed that shoppers spent $380.95 on average during the four days, down 6.4 percent from $407.02 last year. And shoppers spent $159.55 on the Internet, down 10.2 percent from 2013.

The online sales statistic is "a ridiculous piece of data," Storch states, adding that Wal-Mart and Target reported strong online sales for Thanksgiving Day

Read Latest Breaking News from Newsmax.com http://www.Newsmax.com/Finance/Storch-holiday-sales-NRF/2014/12/01/id/610285/#ixzz3KrKw2uIW

You're basing the health of a nation's economy on retail sales of junk imported from China? Now that's funny.

If you know better then educate us. I am sure that your argument will be fascinating.

You still believe the MSM, and Wall street propaganda?

You're a special kind of retarded.

It has been four long winters since the federal government, in the hulking, shaven-skulled, Alien Nation-esque form of then-Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, committed $700 billion in taxpayer money to rescue Wall Street from its own chicanery and greed. To listen to the bankers and their allies in Washington tell it, you'd think the bailout was the best thing to hit the American economy since the invention of the assembly line. Not only did it prevent another Great Depression, we've been told, but the money has all been paid back, and the government even made a profit. No harm, no foul – right?

Wrong.

It was all a lie – one of the biggest and most elaborate falsehoods ever sold to the American people. We were told that the taxpayer was stepping in – only temporarily, mind you – to prop up the economy and save the world from financial catastrophe. What we actually ended up doing was the exact opposite: committing American taxpayers to permanent, blind support of an ungovernable, unregulatable, hyperconcentrated new financial system that exacerbates the greed and inequality that caused the crash, and forces Wall Street banks like Goldman Sachs and Citigroup to increase risk rather than reduce it. The result is one of those deals where one wrong decision early on blossoms into a lush nightmare of unintended consequences. We thought we were just letting a friend crash at the house for a few days; we ended up with a family of hillbillies who moved in forever, sleeping nine to a bed and building a meth lab on the front lawn.

Balance of trade SHOULD be the strongest indicator of a growing economy

...in my opinion it is too late to reform the current economic world order, and we dont have functioning political systems to get the job done even if we wanted to try.

I am not hearing from you argument for why taking the pulse from retail spending is not accurate.

The next economy will most certainly not encourage greed or high consumption.

So you focus upon retail sales, and pretend that it's all going to be okay?

I've led the horse to water. It's up to you to take a long deep draught of the truth.

What next economy? If it's an economy, it will be based on consumerism

You really think 300 million people can be converted to collectivism? En masse?

That is what I advocate. It will be something very unlike what we do now, I just dont know what.