Pictured: Coming to a Mall Near You...
When the gold rush ended as quickly as it started, the artificial demand collapsed and the towns were abandoned. These ghost towns sat vacant for decades, slowly decaying and rotting away. As you drive around today, you notice more and more For Lease signs on vacant retail buildings. Strip malls, inhabited by mom and pop stores, karate studios, pizza joints, and video stores have felt the initial onslaught of consumer deleveraging. As the pace of retailer collapse accelerates in 2009, larger malls will begin to go dark. Once bustling centers of conspicuous consumption and material decadence, built upon a foundation of consumer debt, will become ghost malls. Decaying, rotting malls inhabited by rats, wild dogs, and homeless former retail employees, will be a blight on the suburban landscape for decades.
