Spin: Slang. to cause to have a particular bias; influence in a certain direction

The picture shown here is that of a record player. For those of you that are in your 20’s or even low 30’s you would look at this device and say "what on earth is that?"… But for us older folks we remember what these devices are and they were used to play records which was accomplished by spinning the record with a needle on it to reproduce the recorded sound.

Well, now days the term ’spin’ has taken on a new meaning and that is to take facts and turn them into something else, to find a ‘different’ possible outcome.

Well, the ’spinning’ going on in the media is at a rate to which I find disgusting. For close to two months Lisa and I have described what the data was showing to us with regard to the consumer spending situation. And with each bit of evidence such as the down ward revisions by the retail companies themselves, the consumer sentiment indices, the charts of the discretionary spending, or of the rising cost of living;  there has been someone to ’spin’ it to make it out to be better.

At some point I will go back and collect all of the facts that we have covered with regard to the consumer spending situation and present them again, but this time with the spin that was applied afterwards by the media. And each time the spin ended up being incorrect. But spin they do and spin they will keep doing. Now that we have had our first real look at totals for the holiday shopping period and they confirmed that the consumer has indeed been cutting back and growth is slowing we now have a new spin. Today the spin is that the gift cards will rescue the holiday shopping season… For every bit of economic data released the talking heads crank up the handle on the victrola and give it another spin. (for those who don’t know what a victrola is click here). Yes, there were a lot of gift cards sold this year, so if the people who received those cards go out and shop with them in the period between Christmas and New Years when the retailers are desperately trying to sell inventory at vast discounts then all that is happening is the retailers will be able to clear some of the inventory that is still sitting at greatly reduced margins. So where is the profit? It is less. So gift cards will help the retailers move inventory, but at the cost of profit margins. So let the talking heads spin away, we will stick with the facts.