Seems it already has.

Walmart, Home Depot, Now Sears: U.S. Retail Sales Collapsing

August 31, 2007 (LPAC)--Offering steep discounts didn't stop sales falling for the second quarter this year at two more big discount chains in the U.S. On August 30, Sears announced that its sales had fallen 4.3% in the last quarter, and that Kmart's fell by 3.8 percent. As a result, Sears profits fell by 40% in the quarter, the second quarter in a row they declined.

Two other retail chains directed at America's lower 80%, Walmart and Home Depot, announced their sales had declined two weeks earlier.

So much for billionaire hedge fund honcho Edward Lampert's promise when he merged Kmart and Sears Roebuck Co. in March 2005, that he would generate great profits for its shareholders by cutting costs and jobs.



Bank of England Helicopters Inject Massive Liquidity into Barclays Bank



August 31, 2007 (LPAC)--The Bank of England was forced to pump an emergency 1.6 billion pounds ($3.2 billion dollars) into one single bank yesterday, as the bankrupt financial system proved once again as dry as Greek forests these days.

When it was then reported that that bank was Barclays, which had already borrowed from the Bank of England's emergency window this month, Barclays managers put out the unbelievable story that they don't have any financial difficulties, but only borrowed such a huge amount of money at a "penalty" short-term interest rate of 6.75%, to handle a "technical breakdown in the system used to clear and settle money-market transactions" on August 29.

Barclays then announced today that it had just injected $1.6 billion into the Cairn Capital hedge fund which it had helped set up, an amount which just happened to be half the amount borrowed from the Bank of England. Barclay's bailout kept the fund from launching a "fire sale" of its assets. Cairn is one of four exotic financing funds, called SIV-Lites, created by Barclays, which until this month merrily sold short-term commercial paper backed by worthless mortgages and car loans. Two of the four have already collapsed, and are selling their assets at a loss, and a third is about to follow suit. The Bank of England helped Barclays "save" one.



Standard & Poors Loses its Head

[link to www.larouchepac.com]