While you probably won't see many more doors closing before the end of the year, expect to see weak retailers facing liquidations if the holiday season is as bad as many predict it will be. We've already seen 22 retailers file for bankruptcy including Steve & Barry's, Circuit City and Linens 'n Things. Some may survive bankruptcy reorganization and live to see another day. Other retailers may not be able to find the funds to refinance and will be forced to liquidate and close.

Locally, near me in Florida, only one Circuit City has closed and you don't see much evidence of the bankruptcy. Shelves are not stocked as well and advertising is down, but you'd only know that if you watch the stores closely.

The top retailers, such as Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) and Best Buy (NYSE: BBY) will survive easily, but many second and third tier retailers will be struggling to make it. Standard & Poors downgraded the credit rating for 53 retailers already this year, which is higher than the total number of downgrades for all of 2007, and it expects to downgrade more before year end. Deloitte Research Chief Economist Carl Steidtmann told Business Week, "It's been a long time since we've seen an environment as challenging as this."

Worldwide government leaders hoped their recent summit would calm investors even though they didn't really come up with anything specific. But it looks like a non starter. Asian markets opened down on Monday morning, showing disappointment that more didn't come out of the summit, European markets followed suit and U.S. stock futures are indicating a lower open as well. Also, news broke that Japan and Hong Kong slid into recession.

The value of both the Yen and the U.S dollar rose as investors looked for safety. Their actions show they were disappointed with the summit and with the fact that world leaders didn't take more concrete steps to avert a global recession.

What did the Group of 20 agree to do? They all agreed to act independently to be sure financial markets, products and participants are subject to supervision, but no coordinated plans were developed. The fact that the leadership of the U.S. is in flux for the next couple of months until President-elect Barack Obama is inaugurated in late January didn't help matters. While he sent Representatives to the meeting only President George Bush attended.

This week, some of the top veterans in private equity -- TPG's David Bonderman, Carlyle's David Rubenstein, and KKR's George Roberts -- got together at a conference in Hong Kong. And, all in all, it was fairly depressing (hey, I guess that's what happens when you lose billions and billions of dollars).

Take Bonderman. He thinks the downturn will be protracted, calling it an L-shaped recession (the more common description is a V-shaped recession, which means there is a strong snapback). In fact, he thinks U.S. unemployment will hit 10% or so.

Then again, keep in mind that Bonderman lost about $1.3 billion on his six month investment in Washington Mutual.

Despite all this, Bonderman still has an appetite for investments. For example, he's focusing on the debt securities from hedge funds. Because of massive redemptions, the prices are at distressed levels.

Rubenstein also gave a grim presentation (he thinks the downturn can last several years). But, he is still bullish on some opportunities, especially in Asia. For example, he thinks China offers some compelling valuations and that the country may become more open to outside investments.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook and The Streetsmart Guide to Short Selling: Techniques the Pros Use to Profit in Any Market. He is also the founder of BizEquity, a valuation website.

Do you like shopping at Target (NYSE: TGT)? Many people do. In fact, investors are hoping that so many people like buying things at the bullseye retailer that the company will beat earnings expectations for the third quarter. Target will be reporting on Monday, November 17. What should we expect?

Shareholders should expect a drop in the bottom line. Now, did we need a source to tell us this? Probably not. The consumer is starting to feel scared, there's no doubt about it. I'm sure everyone has anecdotal evidence concerning the fear that is out there. Consumers are afraid that the job cuts being reported in the papers will eventually reach their cubicle, so they're scaling back on spending. So, if Target merely meets the expectation for $0.49 per share next Monday, I'm sure many shareholders will breathe a sigh of relief, even though that will represent about a 12% drop in per-share profit.

I'm not so sure Target will beat, though. For one thing, Brent Archer recently reported on Target's lousy October sales data. They missed Wall Street's mark. Since Target beat the last two quarters; I figure we're due for a miss considering everything that's been going on. We shall see. I'll be interested to see how the margins are doing and what kind of position the company may be in going into Black Friday. And I'll be looking at the comps, of course.

To provide further fuel for the economic fire, jobless claims in the first week of November were higher than they have been since September 2001. My hunch is that the current recession will be worse than the one in 2001. And the reason is that the 2001 recession was an equity-led recession, while the current recession is debt-led.

How bad are the jobless statistics? Initial jobless claims grew by 32,000 to a larger-than-forecast 516,000 in the week ended November 8th, up 7% from a revised 484,000 the prior week. Big banks, which have already fired 150,000 people, recently announced an additional 12,000 layoffs.

Why is this recession so much worse than the one in 2001? As I posted in January -- when I suggested then that investors get out of stocks -- equity-led recessions limit their damage to people and companies that own over-valued stock. But debt-led ones blow up a bigger bubble that forces the rapid sale of collateral -- like houses, cars, stocks, and other assets -- thus driving down prices and creating a vicious cycle of closing businesses and firing people.

That's not good for an economy that depends on consumer spending for 70% of its growth.

Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates. He also teaches management at Babson College. His eighth book, You Can't Order Change: Lessons From Jim McNerney's Turnaround at Boeing, will be published by Portfolio on December 26, 2008.

"There's no question these are dangerous times and the financial world is in uncharted waters," caution resource experts Mary Anne and Pamela Aden.

In The Aden Forecast, the sisters offer an exceptional in-depth discussion on inflationary vs. deflationary foreces, their outlook for precious metals, and their top gold and silver positions for long-term investors.

"The global financial system is on very thin ice, teetering on collapse. Global central banks clearly are literally pulling out all the stops to revive lending and the world economy.

"Will these efforts work? Will they be enough? Those are the most important unanswered questions of the day and only time will tell, but we should know much more in the critical month or so ahead. Why?

"The Fed is spending money at an astronomical rate. It's creating this money out of thin air by monetizing bad debts and whatever else it has to. Remember, this is on top of all the other ongoing government expenses and it's extremely inflationary.

"Normally, there is a lag of about a year or so between money creation and inflation but eventually, what's recently happened will result in massive inflation, a much lower U.S. dollar and a soaring gold price.

"The bottom line is this, if the banks start to lend again, then the economy will be on the road to recovery and inflation. But we know the banks are scared and they're being extremely cautious, for good reason.

Are you better off than you were a year ago? Probably not. Since then, global markets have lost roughly half, or $30 trillion worth of their value. House prices fell 16.6% between August 2007 and August 2008 and 3.4 million people are expected to have foreclosed on their houses by the end of 2009. So you can't retire as soon as you thought and if you still own it, you can't borrow money against your house.

Looking ahead to the holiday season and witnessing thousands of people losing their jobs could put you in a bad mood. After all, median income is down since 2000 while it still costs much more to fill your gas tank than it did back then -- not to mention pay for health care. So it should come as no surprise to learn that consumer confidence is lower than it has been in the last 41 years.

But consumers are not smart. As John McCain advisor, Phil Gramm has said, Americans are whiners. And McCain himself has made it clear that the economic fundamentals are strong. After all, McCain (or more likely his wife) owns seven houses and thirteen cars. So the point is that his economic fundamentals are strong. And that's all that really matters.

As for American workers, let them eat cake.

Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter.

AIG (NYSE: AIG) is borrowing even more money from the Federal government. As of October 23, it had tapped into $90 billion of the $123 billion the government has made available. The insurance giant was set up with the massive credit line on concerns that if it fails, it could bring the global financial and credit system down with it.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the weekly total of AIG's draw-down remains large. "The new total is $7.4 billion, or nearly 9%, more than AIG had tapped as of a week earlier," the paper said. On Oct. 22, AIG's chief executive said the current bailout loan might not be enough.

Since it is a real possibility that the amount of capital available to AIG may be inadequate, the important question to ask now is, what happens if AIG needs more money?

For starters, common shareholders will probably see the value of their holdings go to zero. AIG's shares are already down to under $2 a share -- a sign traders think it will go bankrupt -- compared to a 52-week high of $64.25 (a full year ago). The government owns 80% of the firm now. For people in the stock, it is probably a good time to take whatever money you have left and run.

The more difficult question is how far does the government go in providing funds? The answer is that the amount of capital may have to go much higher. The credit crisis is not getting better. AIG's credit derivative swaps and mortgage-backed paper are falling in value almost every day. If the government still believes that propping up AIG is the key to averting a true global financial meltdown, it will have to extend more credit to the company.

Economists could debate whether AIG had to be saved. But now that the government has set itself up as a savior, it can hardly back down. If AIG were to go bankrupt it could spark a catastrophe which might be bigger than the one caused by the failure of Lehman. That's a risk the country can't take right now.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 24/7 Wall St.

Some more bad news regarding the real estate market today, as we get the numbers for foreclosures in the third quarter, and see that the foreclosure rate actually jumped by a massive 71% during the quarter.

During the period of July through September, the number of households that received at least one foreclosure notice was 766,000. This marks a huge increase of 71% when compared to the same period last year. This data came available today from the foreclosure listing agency RealtyTrac Inc.

Just how bad has the situation gotten? Well, according to RealtyTrac Inc., before the end of this year, nearly one-third of all the houses listed for sale in the country will be foreclosures, which they are now estimating will reach the one million mark. Pretty scary figures.

Even Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) is feeling the economic pinch. Actually, what started as a pinch has turned into a train wreck, and now even the world's largest web search provider will be slowing hiring and turning down the heat on possible acquisitions. Google CEO Eric Schmidt told Bloomberg Television that advertising budgets are "under stress." I'd say that's an understatement.

In all likelihood, this will be Google's toughest test in its 10-year history. Its entire business revolves around advertising income. Although the company does it better than anyone -- and new media advertising is finally becoming mainstream -- the company's exposure to an ongoing slowdown could be cause for concern. Although the company may "do no evil," it will certainly have some profit evil creeping up on its results in some form soon.

Schmidt added that, "All of us are vulnerable . . . it's a race between a contraction in advertising, which would affect everybody, and a very positive shift from offline to online.'' The question is this: can Google take more of the dollars that are shifting to online advertising faster than the overall contraction in advertising spending over the next year or so (or longer)? Given Google's history, it will almost certainly continue to be successful, but it's hard to see the company taking such huge chunks of market share that the advertising slowdown won't chip away at its results.

"Like other US Treasuries, Treasury Inflation Protected Securities (TIPs) have virtually no credit risk," explains fund expert Mark Salzinger.

The editor of The No-Load Fund Investor adds, "Unlike other US Treasuries beyond short-term bills, however, TIPs also have no inflation risk." Here, he looks at an EYF based on TIPs.

"Twice a year, TIPs' principal valuis are adjusted upward by the amount of the increase in the Consumer Price Index Urban (CPI-U), thus protecting their holders against increases in inflation.

"The total return of the bond equals its yield plus the change in principal value based on inflation, changes in real interest rates (published interest rates minus inflation) and supply-demand in the market for TIPs.

"TIPs' yields are lower than those of regular Treasury sercurities of similar maturities. That's one of the disadvantages of TIPs.

"The other is that any increase in principal value due to the biannual inflation adjustment gets taxed every year as if it were received income.

The Financial Times was good enough to ask what the difference between a "recession" and a "depression" is. The paper did not have an answer. The author of the articles writes what any historian of the economy already knows: "From 1929 through 1933, the United States saw real economic output fall by nearly a third and unemployment soar from 3 per cent to 25 per cent."

Depending on who is counting, the U.S. has had ten recessions since the end of WWII. These are identified by the classic definition that says a recession is two quarters of GDP growth shrinkage.

The oil embargo of 1973 caused the last really nasty depression that most Americans can remember. Unemployment went over 8%. In the 1981 recession, that figure moved over 10%.

What would a depression look like? Probably a period when GDP dropped by 5% for three or four quarters in a row and unemployment was steady above 10%. That may seem arbitrary, but the numbers would be much worse than any period since WWII. Almost no one living would remember a similar period. People's memories of what is economically awful should be taken into account. Bad times are only really bad if someone can put them in reference to their own memories and experience.

Retail sales fell 1.2% in September, a much larger drop than the 0.7% expected by economists.

The numbers were released today by the Commerce Department in its "Advanced Monthly Sales for Retail Trade and Food Services" report. The drop refers to month-to-moth data. Comparing year-to-year data, retail sales were down 1% from September 2007.

Plummeting auto sales were a big factor in the decline. But even when those numbers are factored out, sales were still down 0.6%, three times the expected 0.2%.

According to Scott Hoyt, senior director of consumer economics at Moody's economy.com, the numbers indicate that consumers spent less on just about everything except essentials like fuel and healthcare.

The numbers make it pretty clear that as far as consumers are concerned, the recession is already here and getting worse.

Semiconductor giant Intel Corp (NASDAQ: INTC) reported strong third quarter earnings after the market close today, sending shares up nicely in after-hours trading.

Going into this afternoon's earnings announcement, analysts had been expecting to see the chip maker show earnings of 34 cents per share, but the company was able to top analyst estimates by a penny, with a reported 35 cents per share.

The 35 cents that the company showed for its third quarter is not only impressive because it was above analyst estimates, but also because of how much stronger it was on a year over year basis. During the same period last year, the company had earnings of 30 cents per share.

A lot of attention in the market lately has been focused on the credit crunch and subsequent economic slowdown, and many investors have been left wondering if the overall slowdown had also impacted technology. Today's report should calm some of those concerns, but Intel did warn that it could see slowdown in demand in the fourth quarter.

The company stated that a big reason for the better-than-expected numbers were a result of improved gross margins. During its most recent quarter, the company had a gross margin of 58.9%, compared with 51.2% during the same period last year.

All in all, a great quarter for the company, and traders are rewarding the stock in after-hours trading, pushing shares up 4.5% after the news was released.

Michael Fowlkes has worked as a stock trader for seven years and spent the last four years working as an analyst for the online investment advisory service Investor's Observer.

Oil got off to a strong start today, climbing over $3 earlier in the session, but the last couple hours have seen the precious crude give back its earlier gains and is now trading down slightly on the day at $80.88, down $0.31.

The early day jump was in reaction to continued optimism that a full blown global recession could be avoided with the infusion of $125 billion by the U.S. government into nine major banks.

Last week at this time, we were pretty much all asking ourselves the question of just how bad are things going to get, and this led to a week-long panic in the market that sent all the major international exchanges into free fall. Now it seems like, for the moment, the panic is behind us and investors are starting to suspect that perhaps things are not going to be as bad as people were beginning to believe last week. We won't be looking at the next Great Depression, or so we hope, but with this market, emotion seems to change in a heartbeat.