[Fill in Blank] Retail Closings

With the current state of retail contraction, Kohl’s has announced store closings. Kohl’s follows other retailers hunkering down and shedding costs, including Walmart, Macy’s, J.C. Penny, Barnes & Noble, Office Depot, Gap, American Eagle, Aeropostale, Abercrombie & Fitch, Wet Seal, and Kmart/Sears. That’s quite a list of recent closure announcements.

These retailers have all been growing their immense brick-and-mortar malinvestment footprints while the Federal Reserve was injecting multiple interventions into the economy post-2008 to avert the necessary cleansing of Wall Street fraud and Main Street recklessness.

Stores like Aeropostale and Abercrombie & Fitch (which is said to “embody the essence of privilege and casual luxury”) have been predictably unsustainable because their business models rely on spoiled children who submit to peer pressure for high clothing standards while they have a free reign with Mommy & Daddy’s credit cards. That is, if you can call a paper-thin, $2 t-shirt with a ratty logo on it that sells for $23 a “high standard” for clothing.

Meanwhile, Best Buy executives are expecting revenue declines throughout 2016, after disappointing results in 2015. The company had already announced a $1B stock buyback so the company can jack up its stock price and pay huge dividends.