Stack o mag's in the mail unattended this week...one caught my eye but gave it not much thought till this piece of news: Wal-Mart dumps cold water on U.S. economic bulls

One of the unattended-to magazines? Fast Company What caught my eye: The Walmart you don't know--Why lower prices have a big cost. (It's the December issue, no link yet.)

Hmmm. A company whose balance sheet is weightier than the economies of all but a few of our 1st world allies...

Don't have to read it: predatory business model steeped in Darwin and real estate dice rolls with little downside--build too many stores, kill all competition, sell off the underutilized locations to the next (big box) sucker. Supplier price pressures and to-the-death SKU/slotting wars to make Ghengis Khan seem like, well, a kinder gentler version of Walmart. Categories killed, towns divided, swaths of decades-owned small family business swept away, margin worship driving wholesale and manufacturing jobs offshore or just into non-working family wage McJob territory. Any wonder they chose a "Smiley Face" as their icon?

(Yeah, I know "McJob" hurts Ronald's feelings. If he wanted my sympathy, he'd likewise find a better model, maybe one that doesn't implicitly admit: We can piss off and/or mis-serve 4 out of 10 people who drive-thru, and still make money. And, sleep at night.)