It was a bleak Friday after all for the consumer technology industry. Post Thanksgiving Day spending on Nov. 28 fell 8.4% to $2.03 billion at retail stores compared to the same day a year ago, the NPD Group said Tuesday. It was also the first electronics spending slump in Black Friday's history.

Maybe it was the food coma. Or perhaps it was the prevalence of online shopping deals. NPD has yet to release its sales data from Cyber Monday, but comScore said online spending on consumer electronics during the week of Dec. 1 increased 24% compared with the corresponding period in 2007. Overall spending increased 9% to $3.7 billion at online retailers. (See "Cyber Monday's Electronics Bonanza.")

And who wouldn't want to take their dollars online? Many Web storefronts were promoting free shipping, and there is no threat of being trampled to death by a turkey-fueled mob.

"Clearly there was--during Black Friday week--some shifting from people buying in brick-and-mortar to online," says NPD analyst Stephen Baker. "Black Friday deals were much more available online than they ever were before."

Baker also notes that there was a shift in how retailers approached Black Friday. For instance, there were no "blowout sales." Retailers figured that if consumers decided they weren't going to spend, bigger discounts likely wouldn't entice them. "All [sales] do is give people who were going to shop anyway a bigger discount," Baker says.

NPD noted, however, that sales of LCD TVs larger than 30 inches and notebook PCs rose 18% and 19%, respectively, compared with Black Friday last year. GPS units and digital picture frames also sold well.

Baker says he was most disappointed by poor sales of cameras and camcorders, but notes that many consumers are no longer compelled to upgrade their electronics.

The current recession is unlike any other in the last couple of generations. Usually recessions happen because monetary policy gets tight or tax rates go up. Or, sometimes, like in the Great Depression, both of these plus rising trade barriers lead to a contraction in economic growth.

This time around, the recession is not due to tight monetary policy, higher tax rates or protectionism. It's due to a sudden and sharp plunge in the velocity of money--what we have been calling "risk aversion hysteria." This is where the speed with which money moves its way through the economy slows down as both consumers and businesses decide they want to increase their cash holdings.

Idiotic mortgage loans started the financial fire and overly stringent mark-to-market accounting rules acted as an accelerant, forcing financial firms to write down the value of their assets even when underlying mortgage cash flows were likely to grossly exceed fire-sale prices for mortgage securities.

When it appeared that money in banks and money market funds was no longer safe, consumers decided they would rather have money under mattresses instead of in bank accounts. This panic caused a sharp decline in consumer spending. Retail sales (excluding autos) grew 6% during the year ended in June, but just 1% during the year ended in November. With auto sales included, retail sales fell 4.1% in the year ended in November.

But fresh data on what's been happening on Main Street the past few days suggest the plunge in velocity may be either coming to an earlier end than most analysts expected, or that velocity may even be accelerating.

The National Retail Federation (NRF) says the number of shoppers either in stores or accessing online retailers, from Black Friday through Sunday, was up 17% versus last year and that the average amount spent was up 7.2%. According to the NRF, shoppers were busy buying clothes and electronics. Meanwhile, ShopperTrak, which monitors sales at shopping centers and malls around the country, says Black Friday sales were up 3% versus last year.

Obviously, these figures should be greeted with caution. The NRF numbers are based on a poll of consumers, not actual sales volumes, and the ShopperTrak data is for Black Friday only. It is plausible that, with relatively few shopping days this year between Thanksgiving and Christmas, consumers are buying more on a per day basis but will not buy more during the holiday season as a whole.

Still, experts, who predict this year's overall holiday shopping period will be the weakest in decades thanks to an overall contraction in spending, caution that this year's sales growth may be hard to sustain.

Also complicating matters is a shorter buying season - 27 days between Black Friday and Christmas - instead of 32 last year.

Pakistan initially said Friday that it had agreed to send its spy chief, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, on an unprecedented visit to India to share and obtain information from investigators there. Later Friday, however, Pakistani officials changed their minds and decided to send a less senior intelligence official in Pasha's place, according to a Pakistani source who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

It was unclear what prompted the reversal, but the Pakistani source said the Islamabad government was "already bending over backwards" to be cooperative and did not "want to create more opportunities for Pakistan-bashing." Pakistan's defense minister, Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar, told reporters in Islamabad, "I will say in very categoric terms that Pakistan is not involved in these gory incidents."

Meanwhile, Indian authorities ramped up their accusations that the plot had Pakistani connections. "Preliminary evidence, prima facie evidence, indicates elements with links to Pakistan are involved," Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee said at a news conference in New Delhi. Other Indian officials echoed the statement, but none provided details.

Evidence collected by police in Mumbai, along with intelligence gathered by U.S. and British officials, has led investigators to concentrate their focus on Islamist militants in Pakistan who have long sought to spark a war over the disputed province of Kashmir. India and Pakistan have already fought two wars over Kashmir, the battleground between Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan that each country claimed soon after India's partition in 1947.

A U.S. counterterrorism official said additional evidence has emerged in the past 24 hours that points toward a Kashmiri connection. "Some of what has been learned so far does fall in that direction," the official said, declining to offer specifics.

"We have to be careful here," said the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "When you posit a Kashmiri connection, that puts Pakistan on the table. That is huge, enormous, but what does it mean? It can be anything from people who were [initially] in Pakistan, to maybe people who used to be associated with someone in the Pakistani government, to any gradation you could find."

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, who has sought a rapprochement with New Delhi, rejected widespread suspicions in India that Pakistani intelligence services may have supported the Mumbai gunmen. "The germs of terrorist elements were not produced in security agencies' labs in Pakistan," he said Friday.

Analysts said Pakistan's pledge to assist in the investigation and send its spy chief to India was a sign of the high stakes involved. When armed Kashmiri militants tried to take over the Indian Parliament in December 2001, the fallout was immediate, as both countries responded with a massive military buildup along their shared border.

"A Pakistani link here would be so utterly damaging, all the way around, to Indo-Pakistani relations," said Shaun Gregory, a professor of international security at the University of Bradford in England and a specialist on Pakistan. The decision to dispatch Pasha to India, he said, "does signal a determination on Pakistan's part to clarify that even if there's a Pakistani link here, that it had nothing to do with the government."

A senior Pakistani official said the idea for Pasha's visit came during a telephone conversation Friday between Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani. Singh, who had previously blamed the Mumbai attacks on groups "based outside the country," offered to provide evidence to Gillani.

"One way to ensure that" was to send Pakistan's intelligence chief, the Pakistani official said. "If there is evidence, share it."

Shoppers, who had snapped their wallets shut since September, turned out in force Friday to grab deals on the traditional start of the holiday shopping season, but it was clear worries about the economy tempered buying.

Preliminary reports from several major retailers including Macy's and Toys "R" Us said that crowds were at least as large as last year's, but many shoppers sounded notes of caution and concern.

Retailers extended their hours, some opening at midnight, and offered deals that were deeper and wider than the deep discounts that shoppers found throughout November.

Best Buy, which threw its doors open at 5 a.m. offered such specials as a 49-inch Panasonic plasma HDTV for $899.99 and a $189.99 GPS device by Garmin. Toys "R" Us was offering up to 60 percent discounts from 5 a.m. to 10 a.m.

But the excitement over the early morning specials proved fatal for at least one store. Police from Nassau County, N.Y. say a Wal-Mart worker died after being trampled by a throng of unruly shoppers shortly after the Long Island store opened Friday. Wal-Mart offiicals would not confirm reports of stampede, but said a "medical emergency" caused them to close the store.

Ellen Davis, a spokeswoman at the National Retail Federation, the industry's largest retail group, said that she was "not aware of any other circumstances where a retail employee has died working on the day after Thanksgiving."

Many consumers, clutching the store circulars, were focused on a few bargains Friday and said they were slashing their overall holiday budgets from a year ago as they juggle paying their rent and other bills while putting food on the table amid layoffs, tightening credit and dwindling retirement accounts.

Even for the growing number of parents who were limiting their gift buying to just their children this year, financial troubles were forcing them to be stingy.

"I have never slept here before to save a few bucks, but with the economy so bad I thought that even a few dollars helps," said Analita Garcia of Falls Church, Va., who arrived at a local Best Buy store at 7 a.m. Thursday with 10 family members. She bought a 32-inch LCD TV for $400, slashed from $500, along with an iPod and several DVDs.

"This year a lot of people I know won't be getting Christmas presents. I have to pay the rent and bills, and I have two little ones at home to think of," Garcia added.

At the Best Buy store in Syracuse, N.Y., a line snaked past stores and around walkways on the second floor of Carousel Center a few moments before the store's 5 a.m. opening -- about eight hours after some people near the front of the line had arrived. Rob Schoeneck, the mall's manager, estimated about 1,000 people were waiting for the electronics store to open and said the crowd was about the same size as a year ago.

Inside, Kira Carinci, 33, a teacher from Cicero, N.Y., searched for the $80 "Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock" video game and guitar controller bundle for her son but said she is more concerned about money than she was last holiday season. She said she had set aside a certain amount for Christmas spending.

"I don't usually save, so this year is a little different," she said.

By 3:43 a.m., about 50 people had lined up in preparation for the 5 a.m. opening at a Wal-Mart store in Cary, N.C. Shannon Keane, 38, of Cary, who arrived with her son, Miles, 13, at midnight, said she was buying only one item today: an iPod for her son.

"He really wanted this one thing," Keane said. "So we're here for this one thing."

Keane, who was recently laid off from her job at an insurance company, said she was on a budget this year because her unemployment checks were also helping support family in Colorado.

"I really can't focus on gifts," she said. "I have to focus more on helping them pay their bills. It's hard," she said of being a single mom on a small income. "I've always filled the tree. But you have to be honest. This year, I'll do the best I can."

Joyce and Kevin Kirk of Georgetown in southwest Ohio, who arrived at Kohl's at Eastgate Mall in suburban Cincinnati, at 4 a.m Friday, bought toys for the baby and clothing for her older children, mostly at 50 percent to 60 percent off.

She said they decided to focus more on the kids this year and cut down on gifts for other people. Her husband, a construction worker, wasn't getting enough work at his company and recently switched to another company.

"We just can't do as much this year because of the economy," said Joyce Kirk, who aims to cut her holiday budget to $1,000. She usually spent $3,000 to $4,000 on Christmas gifts

Black Friday received its name because it historically was the day when a surge of shoppers helped stores break into profitability for the full year. But this year, with rampant promotions of up to 70 percent throughout the month including even at luxury stores like Saks Fifth Avenue amid a deteriorating economy, the power of this landmark day for the retail industry could be fading.

Still, while it isn't a predictor of holiday sales, the day after Thanksgiving is an important barometer of people's willingness to spend for the rest of the season. And particularly this year, analysts will dissect how the economy is shaping buying habits in a season that many analysts predict could see a contraction in spending from a year ago.

Last year, the Thanksgiving shopping weekend of Friday through Sunday accounted for about 10 percent of overall holiday sales, according to ShopperTrak RCT Corp.

The group hasn't released estimates for Black Friday sales this year, but experts believe it will remain one of the season's biggest selling days, even as shoppers remain deliberate in their spending.

"This is definitely a hit-and-run mentality," said C. Britt Beemer, chairman of America's Research Group. "They are running in, grabbing the deal and running out. This is what I am seeing this morning."

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AP Retail Writer Ashley M. Heher in Chicago; AP Technology Writer Rachel Metz in Syracuse, N.Y.; and Associated Press Writers Barbara Rodriguez in Raleigh, N.C.; Kelly P. Kissel in Lake Charles, La.; Lisa Cornwell in Cincinnati; Tamara Lush in Pembroke, Pines, Fla., and Jacquelyn Martin in Falls Church, Va. and Colleen Long in New York, contributed to this report.

DETROIT -- Andy Winnie had it all worked out. Thanksgiving dinner would be moved to Friday, so the family could make its annual pilgrimage to Thursday's Detroit Lions game.

Three weeks ago, Winnie punted. His heart wasn't in it. Not to watch these 0-11 Lions, not this year.

"It's just hard, with all the things going on in life, to watch the Lions be so pitiful," said Winnie, an owner of an advertising agency. "I'm a season ticket holder and I can't even give away my tickets. You need tickets to the game?"

It is hard to imagine, without the arrival of locusts, a city having a worse year. The economy is in a tailspin, the former mayor is in jail and the auto executives are a punch line because they went to Congress to plead poverty and arrived aboard separate private jets.

Retired laborer Bob Holmes said over a beer on an afternoon raw with sleet, "There isn't any upbeat to be had."

Certainly not at Ford Field, where the lowly Lions of the National Football League offer their fans scant refuge from the economic storm. More metaphor than football team, the squad has been suffering so long that even some Detroiters are saying it is time to let the Thanksgiving day game be played somewhere else.

Once, the sentiment would have been sacrilege. What sports-minded citizen doesn't remember being a kid and knowing the Lions were playing the Packers, the Bears, the Vikings, while the turkey was in the oven? Whatever the outcome, it felt like a contest.

"To be honest with you, they deserve to get pulled" from playing on Thanksgiving, said Ford dealer Buzzy Holzer, who once sold cars to players on the team and used to pay $10,000 a year for four season tickets on the club level. "This year, I boycotted the Lions and I'm so glad. I've got tickets for Thursday's game and I'm debating whether to go."

His calculations are not helped by the fact that the Lions' guest is the Tennessee Titans, who enter the game with a 10-1 record, tops in the American Football Conference.

The way some people talk about football and the economy in the same breath, it can be hard to know which one they're referring to.

Is it the team that has lost 18 of its last 19 games and has won just one playoff game since 1957? Or is it the city that is hemorrhaging jobs and hope as its manufacturing core splinters?

"It's like there's a black cloud over their heads. Whatever they say, it doesn't seem to work," said Dave Stronski, a bartender at Nemo's, across the street from half-demolished Tiger Stadium in the Corktown neighborhood, where the Lions also played for 36 years. He was talking about the Lions.