Financiapocalypse has claimed yet another victim. This time it is Office Depot—and they are planning to close 112 stores, or 9% of their North American locations over the next three months.

A list of the store closings has not been made available, but the breakdown will look like this: “45 stores in the Central U.S., 40 in the Northeast and Canada, 19 in the West and 8 in the South.” They are also shutting down six of their 33 distribution facilities and scaling back openings to 20 in 2009.

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Wall Street hit levels not seen since March 2003, with the Dow Jones industrial average falling below the 8,000 mark.

As the fate of the Big Three automakers hangs in the balance with no bailout in sight, the benchmark Dow index skids nearly 430 points, closing at 7,997. The S&P 500 is also punished

The CEOs of the big three automakers flew to the nation’s capital yesterday in private luxurious jets to make their case to Washington that the auto industry is running out of cash and needs $25 billion in taxpayer money to avoid bankruptcy.

Wagoner flew in GM’s $36 million luxury aircraft to tell members of Congress that the company is burning through cash, asking for $10-12 billion for GM alone. … Wagoner’s private jet trip to Washington cost his ailing company an estimated $20,000 roundtrip. In comparison, seats on Northwest Airlines flight 2364 from Detroit to Washington were going online for $288 coach and $837 first class.

From left, GM CEO Richard Wagoner, Chrysler's Robert Nardelli, Alan Mulally of Ford and Ron Gettelfinger of the United Auto Workers testify on Capitol Hill on Wednesday.
From left, GM CEO Richard Wagoner, Chrysler's Robert Nardelli, Alan Mulally of Ford and Ron Gettelfinger of the United Auto Workers testify on Capitol Hill on Wednesday.

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You know times are hard when giant companies start to trim down their operational costs by laying off workers, or even worse, closing down stores. Circuit City Stores, Inc., is one of them.

A total of 155 Circuit City stores that are underperforming and deemed to be unable to fit in with the company’s overall strategy will be closed, and these identified stores are located across 55 US media markets. The list of closing stores are available here.

These impacted stores will begin to offer closing sales a day after, and these sales will run until the current calendar year is over, or they have nothing else left to sell – whichever comes first.

Press Release

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