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Shoppers at Macy's on Black Friday
At least that's what Macy's CEO Terry Lundgren said Thursday during the company's quarterly earnings call.
Even Macy's warned "spending by domestic customers remained tepid" in its most recent quarter.
All of this has some folks worried if we're about to relive the last recession.
"Someone asked me just earlier this morning, is this similar to 2008 and 2009, and my answer is absolutely no," he said.
Lundgren said that 2008 was simply a disaster, and the current pullback has nothing on that collpase.
"It's not similar because then it was a crystal-clear massive pullback by consumers and we literally saw them stop shopping the day of the Lehman Brothers collapse," Lundgren said. "The next day business dropped dramatically, we just saw consumers stop spending for a strong period of time. So this is different."
He also had a much brighter outlook for the future of the economy.
"This is different," Lundgren said. "This is what we've seen, a slowdown, as you said, in transactions particularly in this last quarter. We also here can see that the fundamentals of the economy are in much better shape than they were in 2008 and 2009."
Business Insider/Andy Kiersz, data from NY Fed
To be fair, few could've predicted what came in 2008. And Lundgren does acknowledge the existing headwinds, like the unfavorable swing in the dollar, which has been one of the biggest drags on corporate profits.
"I can't tell you if the dollar's going to change in terms of its strength in the near-term," he said. "And in fact, I don't expect it will. But over time it will adjust and that subject will improve in terms of our ability to sell more products to tourists."
Despite the dollar concern, Lundgren said that if the disappointing numbers stick around, there might be cause for worry, but he's "not expecting that to be the case."
So for Lundgren there's bad news, but its not too bad, and if we all just wait it'll turn around.