The truth starts to emerge, or at least something approximating the truth. All Christmas season I repeated the notion that no one knows what the real sales levels are. It was all guesses, within a rather large margin of error. It was just wanking off. Spin. Nonsense.

So today, it's reported that most the of the big mass market chains did pretty poorly. Now they tell us, when reports really can't affect anything. Even these figures are probably massaged and manipulated: either up or down, depending on what their motives are. But since the news is buried on the second page of the business section, 11 days into the new year, they are under the radar.

These figures should be front page news, folks. They're really rotten, and almost surely will result in a recession.

Only two stores on the chart were actually up; Costco, at 7.0% and Wal-Mart at a measly 2.7%. Down 7.5% at Penneys, 6% at the Gap, and 5% at Target, and just about every other store.

They blame the calendar and the weather. Well, screw that. That's lame. I never fall back on those excuses because THEY ARE ALWAYS THERE! in one way of another. You can ALWAYS blame the weather and the calendar, so why bother?

But the real news STILL hasn't come out. "....sales rose 2.7 percent at Wal-Mart, whose relentless price-cutting appeared to resonate with anxious shoppers."

"Relentless price-cutting...." I'm sure that did wonders to the bottom line. 2.7% won't even cover inflation. If you had to cut your margins to get even that much of a boost, you did pretty poorly.

For whatever reason, the chains have decided to lower everyone's expectation. After all, they can blame the housing crisis and the imminent recession. Time to cover all your bad decisions with lame excuses.

But it's all spin, as far as I'm concerned.