U.S. retails sales surged yesterday, on the traditionally retail sales friendly Black Friday. Black Friday is actually a reference to Friday, September 24, 1869. On that day a lot of people lost their fortune due because of two smartasses who made money by buying most of the Gold being traded in NYC and inflating the price up so much that they were able to make a profit of $11 million in those old days.

Here's an hour-by-hour look at how crazed about shopping people were yesterday. One particular people that I know went into 5 different tech. stores to buy all kinds of stuff, from camcorders to printers to VCRs, most of which they probably never needed. To me it's all about the prices, retailers dropping their margins to such minuscule levels that it lures in hordes of people who buy merchandise they don't really need. That's sort of similar to buying winter clothes in a post-season sale, on to find next winter that they've gone out of fashion.

Still, I think that if I had seen one of those low low price newspaper ads, I'd have gone too. Oh well, may be next year.