AZCentral.com – Wall Street heads into another turbulent week with investors set to pore over a government report on retail sales and earnings from Wal-Mart Stores Inc. to get a better reading on the consumer.

There are growing signs that the deepening economic slowdown has caused Americans to tighten their purse strings. There was fresh evidence of this past week when retailers posted the worst October same-store sales in 35 years – and analysts believe the upcoming holiday shopping season could be among the slowest in decades.

With consumer spending driving more than two-thirds of the U.S. economy, investors will be paying close attention to earnings outlooks for some of the nation’s biggest retailers. Wal-Mart, the nation’s biggest retail chain, will post results on Thursday. Kohl’s Corp., JCPenney Co., Macy’s Inc., and Abercrombie & Fitch Co. are scheduled to release reports as well.

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Tags: clothing-manufacturer, costco-wholesale, framingham, mortgage-meltdown, national-energy, radioshack, sunday-times, swiss-franc, tam, uk-equity, wal-mart-stores-inc

Bloomberg – Hedge-fund managers Gottex Fund Management Holdings Ltd. and Acorn Capital Group LLC are among at least 20 investors the FBI said may have been victimized by a fraudulent lending scheme that could exceed $2 billion.

The alleged fraud was disclosed last week after an FBI raid at the Minnetonka, Minnesota, headquarters of Petters Group Worldwide, a closely held investment company that owns Polaroid Corp. and Sun Country Airlines Inc. Chief Executive Officer Thomas Petters resigned on Sept. 29, according to Petters Group spokeswoman Andrea Miller.

Petters, 51, had been running a fraudulent investment operation since at least the mid-1990s, siphoning off money for his own use, according to an affidavit by Timothy Bisswurm, a special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Bisswurm said in the affidavit that investors made loans to companies owned by Petters, believing the money would be used to buy merchandise and sell it to retailers including Costco Wholesale Corp. and Sam’s Clubs, a unit of Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

The purchases were never made, Bisswurm said in the affidavit, which was filed in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis. Instead, Petters used the money “for his other business ventures and to support his extravagant lifestyle,” according to the Sept. 19 affidavit.

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Tags: american-bar-association, clothing-manufacturer, disagreements, housing-market, investigation-into-allegations, petters-group-worldwide, publishing-company, qualitative-assessment