2014 has not been kind to Walmart: as we have covered every earnings release this year, the largest corporate entity in the world by employees (second only to the US Dept of Defense and the Chinese army) has had to find repeated excuses why its revenues and earnings have consistently missed, and why its traffic keeps declining, most recently in "Walmart Misses Across The Board, Guides Lower: Blames It On Weather, Obamacare And Taxes [8]." Actually, 2013 wasn't Walmart's year either: recall when early last year Wal-Mart revealed that "February Sales "Total Disaster", Worst Monthly Start Since 2006 [9]" only to see its operations drift lower as the company was once again impacted by both the change in US tax policy and a modest reduction in welfare handouts.
Some could say Walmart is fighting to stay relevant in a world in which only retail outlets that cater to the uber-wealthy are outperforming, while all those whose bottom line depends on the welfare of the non-1%, are suddenly finding themselves scrambling to agree with all the "recovery" propaganda,
But while the company is doing what it can to make sure the billions in shareholder wealth of the Walton family isn't impacted due to its over-reliance on cheap Chinese imports and the disappearing disposable income of the US lower/middle classes (or, as Germany would put it, leave it in the "safe hands" of the Federal Reserve) it is happy to engage in a tete-a-tete with its liberal arch nemesis, the New York Times, and specifically an article written last week by Tim Egan titled "The Corporate Daddy" in which it slams WMT's minimum wage policy.
Well, after taking endless abuse from the NYT not just here but in many other opinion pieces in the recent past, WMT decided to finally "slam" back, releasing its own fact-check of the NYT op-ed, in which it finds that most of the assertions used by the NYT are, how should one say, lacking.
In the end of the day, it is difficult to say who is right: the liberal media outlet or its arch-nemesis, and the symbol of all that the left hates about corporate America, Walmart.
Either way, now that Walmart, and its billions in fungible funding - is finally fighting back against the largely cash strapped NYT, things are about to get interesting.
From Walmart's blog [10]:
We saw this article in The New York Times [11] and couldn't overlook how wildly inaccurate it is, so we had some fun with it. I hope you will too.
[12]
Here are the links we mentioned in our edits:
1. Associate story re: public assistance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WwGhOhRH38 [13]
2. Ed Schultz on Polifact.com re: public assistance: http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/may/23/ed-schultz/ed-schultz-says-walmart-worke... [14]
3. Jason Furman on Walmart and the economy: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/dialogues/features/2006/is_walmart_good_for_the_amer... [15]