By Maxine Shapiro, KERA 90.1 business commentator
Dallas, TX – It's Friday so "It's Only Money," a review of the big and not-so-big stories of the week. I'm Maxine Shapiro with KERA Marketplace Midday.
In one breath, the stock market moved its focus from the war to the economy as the world watched the symbolic falling of Saddem Hussein. It was back to matters at hand. How and when will the economy get energized? Yesterday, large retailers Wal-Mart, J.C. Penney's, Target and Federated, parent to Macy's, all reported a dismal March, which is why this morning's March Retail Sales figure took everyone by surprise. That index rose 2.1%. At best, economists were expecting an eight-tenths percent rise. This was the largest monthly increase since October of 2001. So what did we buy? Cars, for one. Take that purchase out of the picture, and retail sales would have rose only 1.1%. We're also fixing up our houses and beautifying our gardens. Home improvement stores saw the largest increase. But at any angle, economists were jubilant to see the consumer spending.
Do you know where your U.S. representative was at 10 p.m. last night? Arriving on the House floor to debate and finally vote on the budget four hours later. It passed by a thin margin. The Senate votes today. And if I had to take a bet, I'd double those four hours.
Yahoo, eBay, Amazon, USA Interactive? That's how Hotels.com CEO David Litman describes the new landscape of online commerce. New York-based USA Interactive bought out Dallas-based Hotels.com for just over $1 billion. After a long process, USA also owns Ticketmaster and Expedia. Hotels.com stock rose yesterday $10 on that news to over $63 a share.
With airline travel declining steadily since the end of March, a simple assumption can be made: We're definitely checking into hotels; we're just not flying to get to them. For KERA Marketplace Midday, I'm Maxine Shapiro.
Marketplace Midday Reports air on KERA 90.1 Monday - Friday at 1:04 p.m. To contact Maxine Shapiro, please send emails to mshapiro@kera.org.
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