Don't Blame Consumers for Wal-Mart's Missteps

No, that's not a convulsion you are seeing. It is the Business Press Maven actually dancing. But, and this is important, it's his own little gavotte.

What you see more commonly is a simple do-si-do. A company says something, and (dance, one, two, three) the business media repeats it.

This is probably most reliably seen in reporting by retail companies. A retailer says that results were weak because of warmer-than-expected weather, and the business media takes it as an article of faith, reporting it verbatim. Later, the retailer says that results were weak because of colder-than-expected weather, and (dance, one, two, three) that's how the business media reports it.

This brings us to yesterday's reports by Wal-Mart(WMT) and Home Depot(HD). The companies primarily blamed the wider economy for their ongoing, long-standing troubles, and the business media promptly (dance, one, two, three) got busy declaring the consumer and the economy dead, buried and eaten by worms.

Certainly, these two retailers, pulling up lame with merchadising and store operation failures for several years now, have seen their troubles exacerbated recently by economic concerns. The Business Press Maven has three children, three cats and a dog. I know what it is to deal with higher gas and home heating prices, and I can only imagine what it's like to support the feral and furry while feeding the beast of a crummy mortgage.