Kurt Barnard Quotes on Work & Career (4 Quotes)

There are two conflicting forces at work on the consumer. One is people have jobs, they have money, the unemployment rate is still at a 30-year low of 3.9 percent, a lot of economic circumstances are very, very favorable. A lot of economic circumstances are very, very favorable, people have money and jobs, but they don't have as high a discretionary spending level as they did a year ago.

However, retailers shouldn't break out the champagne yet, ... The rebates will have a very modest effect on spending. With a 6.4 percent unemployment rate, there are millions of people in the country with no income except for unemployment and welfare benefits. Millions more are on long-term unemployment, those that simply have stopped looking for work.

Today's (consumer confidence) numbers do very little other than to simply confirm what we had predicted some time ago, that a consumer spending slowdown is basically inevitable so long as the employment climate remains as stagnant as it is,

To go head-to-head with a 10,000-pound gorilla is nonsense. It's like Switzerland declaring war on the United States. That, of course, doesn't work, ... Wal-Mart ate Kmart's lunch.