To hear the nightly newscasters tell it, the only patriotic thing to do this Christmas is to have a field day at your local mall. With the economy in the tank, Americans are being urged to resume their shopaholic ways in the interests of the free market. While Internet news services report that mall traffic is heavy, the cash registers are simply not ringing like they used to. Even with prices drastically reduced anywhere from 50 to 70 percent, the public simply isn’t buying—at least, not in the way retailers had hoped.
