When you're a cash cow like Federated, you should invest in a growth business and not another buggy whip company.

Business died for a few days, you've got a ton of inventory, so what do you do? You turn lemons into lemonade and make the week after Christmas more important with super sales and promotions.

He really knows the shopping center business from the ground up,

Kmart said it closed its worst performing stores because it couldn't maintain inventory once its vendors cut themselves off. Now that the stores are shuttered and inventory is up, Kmart is still doing less business than before. The company is still losing money and market share. I'm not sure the company can get past Christmas.

The company has remodeled its stores several times and is also trying to sell its credit business . But when the smoke clears, it's anyone's guess as to how many more years Sears can go on like this.

Those retailers who promoted like mad got the business and they won.