This is John Batchel. Colleague, Jim McTague, former Barron's editor at Washington, now a novelist in Lancaster County, goes to the local Costco.

This is a fabulous store. It has a hay barn for the Amish who come in on their buckboards and their horses.

However, the Costco store is slow going these days. Jim watches and reports.

He talks to a man who has experience with other Costco stations, Costco stores. Does it mean

anything about the national economy? Unsure, but when Costco's done well, there have been bright numbers coming from the economy,

the jobs market, consumers especially.

And here, well, we'll see.

It's springtime.

Shopping should be spirited.

And yet more of this later.

Well, I went to Costco, and I watch.

I go there to watch more than shop.

And the spending on discretionary goods was almost non-existent yesterday.

And the traffic at Costco yesterday was very slow. Now, I talked to a merchant,

they have merchants come in to sell their wares. There was a fellow selling a solar-powered

charging system for about $750.

He said compared to the traffic in stores,

Costco's in Irvington, New Jersey,

and, you know, parts of North Jersey,

where they come through the doors three and four at a time,

the Costco in Lancaster was pretty slow. We used to have two check-in

stations as you walked into the Costco store where you swipe your card. It's sort of like admitting

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