It’s been a tradition that as millions of families recover from their Thanksgiving turkey dinners they start formulating battle plans for Black Friday shopping deals. But with a slowing economy, a shaky housing market, high gas prices and weakened consumer confidence many sales industry analysts are predicting that this year’s Black Friday won’t be anywhere as crazy as those from recent years. Many stores such as Wal-Mart, Best Buy, CompUSA, J.C. Penney, Toys-R-Us and more have already had the prices of their products lowered after Halloween hoping to spark slugging store sales.

“I don’t expect to see the crazy knock-the-door-down crowds as usual,” said Marshall Cohen, the chief economist of the consumer research company NPD Group. “Where you had 500 people at 5 A.M. last year, this year you’ll see 200.”

The BlackFriday.info and Black Friday Ads websites have been updating constantly showing the latest deep discounts from all the major electronics and home furnishings chains. As some consumers bundle up to spend a cold night camped outside the stores in the hopes of finding a great bargain or two the store owners are hoping that the analysts prediction of a gloomy Black Friday is wrong, well except for what Consumer Reporters has to say. In their latest annual Holiday Poll the outfit said that 25% of consumers it polled plan to take part in Black Friday shopping, up 5 percent from just the year before.

via CNN and Baltimore Sun