The worst is yet to come?

So, Circuit City is officially liquidating.  Bloomberg reports that

 Circuit City Stores Inc., the bankrupt consumer-electronics retailer, hired four liquidators to sell all the remaining merchandise in 567 stores before it goes out of business, the company said today.

Circuit City signed an agreement with retail liquidators Great American Group WF LLC; Hudson Capital Partners LLC; SB Capital Group LLC; and Tiger Capital Group LLC, the company said.

The announcement comes a day after the company held an auction it billed in court papers as its last chance to survive bankruptcy as an intact, though smaller, chain.

“We are extremely disappointed by this outcome,” said James A. Marcum, acting chief executive officer, in a statement. “The company had been in continuous negotiations regarding a going-concern transaction. Regrettably for the more than 30,000 employees of Circuit City and our loyal customers, we were unable to reach an agreement with our creditors and lenders.”

I shudder to think that this blood-letting will continue on throughout 2009, and maybe even into 2010.  

The latest issue of Foreign Policy has commentaries from five "doomsayers" whose bottom line is that it ain't over yet.  Looks like they want us to understand that this is a lull before the second and final storm blows through and levels out some of the structures made unsteady the first time around.

Excerpts from a couple:

Dean Baker:

once the financial situation begins to return to normal (which might not be in 2009), investors will be unhappy with the extremely low returns available from dollar assets. Their exodus will cause the dollar to resume the fall it began in 2002, but this time, its decline might be far more rapid. Other countries, most notably China, will be much less dependent on the U.S. market for their exports and will have less interest in propping up the dollar.

For Americans, the effect of a sharp decline in the dollar will be considerably higher import prices and a reduced standard of living. If the U.S. Federal Reserve becomes concerned about the inflation resulting from higher import prices, it might raise interest rates, which could lead to another severe hit to the economy.

Nouriel "Dr. Doom" Roubini:

The global financial pandemic that I and others had warned about is now upon us. But we are still only in the early stages of this crisis. My predictions for the coming year, unfortunately, are even more dire: The bubbles, and there were many, have only begun to burst.

The prevailing conventional wisdom holds that prices of many risky financial assets have fallen so much that we are at the bottom. Although it’s true that these assets have fallen sharply from their peaks of late 2007, they will likely fall further still. In the next few months, the macroeconomic news in the United States and around the world will be much worse than most expect. Corporate earnings reports will shock any equity analysts who are still deluding themselves that the economic contraction will be mild and short.