by Michael Snyder, The Economic Collapse Blog:
If we don’t fix this, will the retail industry be able to survive? There has always been shoplifting, but in the old days it was at a level that made it only a minor nuisance to the big box retailers. Unfortunately, now everything has changed. Highly organized gangs have developed extremely sophisticated plans for how to rapidly loot our major retailers, and the best ones can be in and out in just minutes. Those goods are then resold online or in the streets, and the amounts that we are talking about are absolutely staggering. In fact, as you will see below, theft is now costing retailers in this country about 100 billion dollars a year.