Image via J.C. Penney

BY MEGAN MOLLMANN – MEDILL REPORTS

On the heels of the Fed’s news that the economy is “leveling out,” July retail sales dropped 0.1 percent from June, said the U.S. Department of Commerce Thursday.

Total retail sales for July were $342.3 billion, an 8.3 percent decline from July of [...]

(Deb Weinstein/MEDILL)

BY DEB WEINSTEIN -MEDILL NEWS SERVICE

Shareholders and executives of Minneapolis-based Target Corp. (TGT: $39.60 +/-0%), are gathering in Waukesha, Wisc., for the annual shareholders’ meeting today. However, this is no ordinary shareholders’ meeting.

The past few weeks have been a ping-pong game of “Vote for my team” [...]

BY DEB WEINSTEIN-MEDILL NEWS SERVICE

Target Corp. [[TGT]] announced its first quarter results: Profits fell 13 percent to $522 million for the quarter ended May 2, compared with $602 million for the same period last year.

Looking at Bloomberg.com, Target’s results are the best of a bad [...]

(BWR/FLICKR)

BY DEB WEINSTEIN – MEDILL NEWS SERVICE

The future isn’t quite here, but Mesirow Financial’s Chief Economist and Senior Managing Director Diane C. Swonk says what it will look like is coming into focus. In [...]

Martha Stewart (Smoothdude/FLICKR)

BY DEB WEINSTEIN- MEDILL NEWS SERVICE

A day after Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia Inc., [[MSO]] posted a wider loss of $16.8 million for the quarter ended March 31, compared with a $4.2 million loss in the year-earlier period, Martha Stewart, the [...]

(Bruce Sutherland/FLICKR)

BY DEB WEINSTEIN-MEDILL NEWS SERVICE

The latest on the credit crunch: Consumers are increasingly leaning on debit cards as opposed to banking on credit, according to a piece in the Wall Street Journal.

For San Francisco-based Visa Inc., this shift translates into a [...]

BY CLAUDIA-TERESA POU – MEDILL NEWS SERVICE

The U.S. recession has been taking a toll on jobs, retail sales, the auto industry and almost every other sector, but has it been enough to get young adults to stop shopping?

Shopbop.com is Karen Leigh's website of choice. (Claudia-Teresa Pou/Medill)

I conducted my own [...]