As Wal - Mart goes, so goes the country

 There will be no economic recovery in the United States until the economic behemoth known as Wal - Mart begins posting consecutive year over year same store sales. You can take that to the bank. Period. End of sentence.
 Their same store sales should not take a hit during a  mild recession as people tend to shy away from upper tier merchandisers in order to economize.
 Their same store sales should go through the roof during a tough, lengthy recession for the same reason.
 Their same store sales should stagnate/drop during a depression as people tend to run out of money during tough, lengthy depressions.
Whoops.
 Retailers can only cut prices so much due to a weak economy before there is no margin left to cut without giving merchandise away for free.
 Whoops.
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(excerpt. Bold italic mine):
Wal-Mart Stores Inc posted its seventh consecutive quarterly drop in sales at existing U.S. stores and said it will take some time to turn around sales in that unit.

The world's largest retailer has struggled with pricing as it has lost customers to dollar stores while it also is still recovering from a poorly executed decision, since reversed, to pare down the number of items it offered.
"Some of the pricing and merchandising issues in Wal-Mart ran deeper than we initially expected, and they require a response that will take time to see results," Wal-Mart CEO Mike Duke said in a statement, using the style Wal-Mart uses for its U.S. discount stores.
The results and comments about future sales were in contrast to company optimism in the fall, when Wal-Mart said fourth-quarter same-store sales at its namesake U.S. stores should rise, even though its official forecast suggested a decline of 1 percent to a rise of 2 percent.
"At the analyst day in October, Mike Duke made it very clear they were going to do a positive comp this quarter in Wal-Mart U.S. and clearly (they) did not do that, so that was a disappointment," said Telsey Advisory Group analyst Joseph Feldman
The company forecast U.S. same-store sales in the current first quarter to be down 2 percent to flat.
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