THAT much ?

An AJC front page blurb yesterday piqued my interest.   It was from a National Retail Federation report about the amount of shopping Americans did over the Thanksgiving weekend.

I read:  "Comsumers spent an estimated $1.7 billion" and I thought, Wow.  That's a lot.  Then I read the rest of the sentence:  ". . . less than they did a year ago."

Now that's some serious shopping.  Or, being an anti-shopper myself, I might say, "some reckless shopping."

The article went on:

"There are some economic challenges that many Americans still face.   So in general terms, many are intending to be a little bit more conservative with their budgets."

I'm astonished.  In these lingering hard times, we still spent an estimated $57.4 billion going shopping one weekend -- and that's considered 'being conservative.'

Ralph