Sign of the Times: Going Out of Business

Bloomberg.com is reporting that 79,000 retail outlets of various companies will likely close their doors during the first months of 2009, adding to the woes of 148,000 store closings for all of 2008. This year's shuttered doors are the worst since the terrorist-dampened year of 2001.

The good news, the report says, is that the U.S. could stand to have fewer retail outlets anyway.

I'm not sure that fewer choices are necessarily better for consumers, but if the contraction has anything to do with people paying off their debts, re-evaluating the differences between hard needs and mere desires, and deciding to emphasize quality over quantity in what they buy, then perhaps some Americans are getting the message that leaner times are coming.

In the long run that's going make for a much stronger America.