>>>I don't know about your shopping streets but a lot of ours our beginning to look very shut down. the number of empty shops is rising all the time.
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>>One recent report I read said the next wave of bankruptcies would include large numbers of shopping malls because of all the closed stores.
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>No doubt about that at all. The entire economic climate is unraveling faster than we can absorb. We are living through the second depression.

Absolutely. There's a small mall near here where just about the only thing left is a Sears that anchors the thing (it actually pre-dates the mall, I'm told) and a movie theater at the other end. As the larger retailers like Mervyn's and Linens & Things went belly up there just wasn't enough foot traffic to keep the smaller shops (or eateries) open. It's a ghost town.

Another mall went to great lengths with Christmas decorations to cover up vacant storefronts, but they are painfully present and plentiful.