Midnight In The Food-Stamp Economy

SAN FRANCISCO/LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - At 11 p.m. on the last day of the month, shoppers flock to the nearest Walmart. They load their carts with food and household items and wait for the midnight hour. That's when food stamp credits are loaded on their electronic benefits transfer cards.

"Once the clock strikes midnight and EBT cards are charged, you can see our results start to tick up," says Tom Schoewe, Wal-Mart Stores Inc's chief financial officer.

As food stamps become an increasingly common currency in a struggling U.S. economy, they are dictating changes in how even the biggest retailers do business.

From Costco to Wal-Mart, store chains are rethinking years of strategy as they watch prized customers lose jobs and turn to this benefit, the stigma of which is disappearing not just in society, but in corporate America.

Besides staffing up for the spike in shoppers on the first day of the month, retailers are adjusting when and what they stock, updating point-of-sale systems to accept food stamps and shifting expansion plans to focus on lower-income shoppers.

Take Costco Wholesale Corp, a warehouse club operator that caters to middle income Americans who must pay $50 a year to shop in its stores. Nudged along by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, who threatened legal action, Costco began accepting food stamps at a few New York stores in May. It now plans to clear the payments in all of its 413 locations in the United States and Puerto Rico.

"Our view was ... we would not get a lot of food stamps because our member on average is a little more upscale," Costco Chief Financial Officer Richard Galanti said in October. "Well, I think that was probably a little bit arrogant on our part."

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REUTERS:

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE5BH2C220091218

...we are seeing behavior and situations that have never been seen in my lifetime.

We've got Walmart re-engineering their shelves and point-of-purchase marketing to cater to those who use food stamps, because they're becoming so prevalent.

This morning, our primary library branch in Des Moines, announced that it would be closing for a week--due to a lack of funds. A corollary
to this story was that so many homeless families spend time at the library--to avoid the cold. In addition to the library closing due to
lack of funds, there is also an unprecedented number of homeless people who will be affected.

Yesterday, there were at least 15 articles from across the United States, about Santa Clauses in malls--hearing unprecedented requests from children.
Santas in Des Moines, Denver, Florida, etc--said that they have never heard so many requests for food and jobs--EVER. Santas who
had been doing this for decades said it was very upsetting.

We had a deep recession in the 80's, but our current situation seems to be slipping--and continuing to slip. I feel that our situation
is way worse than the 80's recession--despite some of the statistic twisting from the MSM. I'm hearing and seeing
so many negative economic stories like this--you just have to wonder if we're not slipping into a Depression.

in a Depression while Bush was in office but many didn't know it yet while many more had already been out of jobs for years.

We've the media twisting negative statistics into positive ones. When they report the unemployment
numbers, we're told they're positive. Then, two days later--an economist comes forward to tell us
that the numbers really aren't great--they were just finagled and spun positively.

We have these odd economic stories that tell us that we are truly in a very awful situation--much
worse than just a recession. But then the DOW is up 100 points today and we've got the media telling
us that things are just perky.

It's never been so difficult to truly understand exactly where we are---and where we're going.

I have a college degree and a minor in economics--which won't even get me a bowl of soup. However, it shouldn't
be that difficult to understand where we are economically. However it is.

Many of their employees have one of those cards, I bet.

:shrug:

The Banks got theirs
The Military Industrial Complex got theirs
The Insurance/Pharma Racket is getting theirs

When do we get ours?