As most of you know now, the response to the Covid-19 pandemic by The Fed and U.S. government created about $6 trillion in new money, which it pushed into the U.S. economy. The reason was to buoy up the economy during the mandatory lockdowns. All this money put the Retail Apocalypse, the closing of thousands of retail stores in the last decade, on hold for three years or so. Now that consumers have hit the wall financially, the Retail Apocalypse is gaining steam again.
This video lists over 5,200 individual store closings that have already been announced, and most of them will happen this year. These are not all of the companies closing stores down, just 15 of the big ones.
While that $6 trillion in newly created money made most of us Stimulus Ballers for a while, that money has been spent by consumers, who are now largely broke, and saddled up with high debt again. That means that ginormous amount of money has mostly flowed into the investment world, where major corporations and ultra wealthy individuals invested it in "assets." Those assets, which have soared in value since 2020, are stocks in the U.S. stock market, residential real estate, and some other assets like crypto, and collectibles, to a much smaller degree.
Along the way, when everyday people were flush with cash, retail stores caught a break, and the Retail Apocalypse got put on hold for a while. People had money, some were hitting brick and mortar stores regularly, and they stayed in business for a while longer. But the recession that started in 2020, then got put on hold by all that new money, is setting in again. This time there's nothing visible to stop a recession from happening. The main economic countries of the world, China, Japan, Europe, and the U.S., are all slowing down, and consumers are struggling worldwide. That has, once again, slowed down sales in the tradition brick and mortar stores retail world, and thousands of stores are closing down again.
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