Black Friday- Good or bad?

Many websites are listing the Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving when the retailers go from red ink to black ink- making money) ads such as http://bfads.net and http://blackfriday.gottadeal.com/ Two weeks ago Walmart started the fray by have Secret Shopper Friday sales and ordering all the Black Friday websites to take down the Walmart items for Black Friday. I just noticed a new ad for Office Depot where some of the Black Friday items will be available this Sunday- 5 days before Black Friday.

Are retailers starting early because they forsee a less than stellar Christmas season and are trying to jump start it early? Are there going to be less big discounts - after purusing the Black Friday ads, it seems to be not as many huge discount items? I forsee that shoppers will have to look sooner for the discounts-such as starting this Sunday! Wait until after Christmas for sales? No, many sales will start before Christmas.

What are the big ticket items? GPS's, TV's and to a lesser extent laptops (as most have one) seem to be hot, though most are not forseeing any huge huge deals on TV's - just a few hundred off here and there.

Happy Shopping!

XM and Sirius agreed to merger

XM (Valued at $2 billion)and Sirius (Valued at $5 billion) at their respective stockholder meetings on Tues, agreed to a merger. What is holding it up? The FCC (Federal Commerce Commission) has been working on it for a while to determine if it is a monopoly and it would then be illegal for these 2 huge satellite companies to merge.