"Richard Dennis Baum" was an American China watcher, Professor Emeritus of political science at UCLA, and former Director Emeritus of the UCLA Center for Chinese Studies, noted for his many academic works on Chinese politics. Baum creditted Rhoda Sutherland of Oxford University with inspiring his interest in linguistics.

More Richard Baum on Wikipedia.

If they're not hitting the week's plan, they have to do something.

The one thing that everybody kind of has tucked into the back of their minds is that if there is some sort of event that affects a mall between now and Christmas. It's hard to say whether another plane crash like this is going to have much of an impact yet.

There's more art than science to this. Put yourself in their shoes. You don't have a crystal ball. You don't know what to expect.

Gap is experiencing weakness across all its brands, with its merchandise problems exacerbated by its aggressive square footage growth.

I know people refer to this as Black Friday, but it's probably a Blue Friday. We think it's going to be a season that'll probably be not as strong as last year, but nonetheless we think the consumer is in pretty good shape.

They have their planned promotions, but they have to be prepared to add some planned promotions in there if business is not happening.

It's very mixed. When you get into an environment like this, the extremes get magnified -- the good do better and the struggling do worse. It's like quicksand.

Companies (retailers) are being very cautious about their guidance for the second quarter, so we're not completely taking it to heart that these (strong sales) results will carry through.

They are coming up against a number of uncomfortable facts.