2 posts and columns on discretionary spending

Gartner: The Sky Is Falling

in News on April 1, 2009 at 12:00 am PT

Global information technology spending will fare worse in 2009 than it did during the dotcom bust of 2001. That’s the grim news from Gartner, which Tuesday predicted that worldwide IT spending will slip to $3.2 trillion this year from $3.4 trillion in 2008. If that should happen, the drop will be the greatest decline in IT spending in nearly a decade.
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Bernstein Downgrades Amazon, eBay on Macro Concerns

in News on December 19, 2008 at 6:03 am PT

Bernstein analyst Jeffrey Lindsay has cut his ratings on both Amazon and eBay, noting that the large majority of goods on both sites are discretionary purchases, and that–of course–the current environment has people focusing more on worries about unemployment and home foreclosure than spending money on nonessential goods.