Editors Take: 2010 Recovery Requires New Thinking

But as we head into the home stretch of the holiday shopping season, we’re nearing another significant turning point: Consumers will either decide they’re ready to spend more lavishly on gifts again or, well … we won’t go into that other possibility.

I’m guessing there’ll be some improvement over 4Q ’08, but nothing drastic. There are too many out-of-work people out there, and too many others still afraid to disband their boards of buyers.