Be careful if you plan to buy gift cards

It is the time of the year where my sister and I start the song and dance about what to get our parents for Christmas. It is a question that usually provides a shrug as an answer, so the common fall-back is a gift card. Hey, it lets them pick what they want.

But there’s a new worry. Is the retailer going to be there right after Christmas? We need to choose a little wiser now in case the store goes bankrupt at the conclusion of the holiday season.

Some people are going through that now with Circuit City. Maybe you got a card for your birthday or last Christmas and you wanted to use on this year’s sales. Oops (well, almost an oops – the bankruptcy judge ruled that the company can honor th e cards. But it took the act of a judge to make it so.)

Thursday, just days after Circuit City filed for bankruptcy protection, Best Buy trimmed down what it expected to earn in 2009. (We like rankings, so Best Buy is No. 1 and Circuit City is No. 2.) Best Buy says it happened because they’re in a bad retail environment.

Every week, it seems as though more big-box or major retailers are making alarming announcements about their holiday income or earnings forecast – or going into bankruptcy.

So, I won’t be surprised to read in three or four weeks that the holiday gift cards, which were becoming increasingly popular for lazy shoppers like me, are on the decline. (Except at Wal-Mart. They’ll probably set a record.)

I guess I’ll be heading to Wal-Mart for the gift card when I get the shrug.

At THE MALL: The owner of the Augusta Mall, a company in Chicago called General Growth Properties, has a few challenging months ahead .

General Growth Properties said in an SEC filing that it has $958 million of debt coming up for renewal by Dec. 1. It also faces another $3.07 billion in debt that matures in 2009.

Add in the credit crunch, and you can see why there is speculation about a bankruptcy filing from the country’s second-largest mall owner, which might be the only way it can get its debt reorganized.

The company has already put three of its malls in Las Vegas up for sale.

With 200 malls in 44 states, there’s a lot to choose from if it wants to start offering more.

Even if the shoe drops in the next few weeks and they go to bankruptcy court, don’t expect the mall in Augusta to close.

Even if General Growth has to start selling more of its portfolio, who has the money to start gobbling them up?

START BAILING: Maybe General Motors needs to become a bank like American Express. That way they can legally get a portion of the $700 billion bailout.

If it works out well, the First Bank of Chevrolet could provide job s for all the laid-off autoworkers. Isn’t it interesting that Congress had to rush to get us this Wall Street rescue money, yet they’ve been awfully slow in rescuing anyone?

MILLIONS OF MAN HOURS: To be exact, 22 million of them.

The Department of Energy’s management and operating construction work force at Savannah River Site achieved a milestone almost unheard of in the construction industry: 22 million man hours without a lost-time injury or illness.

If you had 22 million people working there, you could achieve that in an hour, but they did this over 10 years. (They have 500 people working there right now.)

Over the course of a decade, the average construction company would have dealt with 300 injuries .

The folks in charge out there said this was achievable because of zero-injury mind-set.