Walmart is now facing some serious music, and one of the biggest bills that's come up to haunt them is their over saturation of stores. At the start of this millennium, they were like modern day Romans, focussed only on aquire and conquor; they were truly determined to kill all other retail competition. They were like the Japanese of the late 80s, when they would ridiculously over bid on property in Manahatten just to have it. I think the business news was reporting, around 2004--2006, Walmart was building an average of five stores a week. But back then, the numbers supported that. Shoppers couldn't get enough of Walmart! I used to call the morining and eveing traffic pattern across my town the Walmart Slip Stream----literally, you'd get caught up in a line of people going to and coming from, on each side of the day.
But now look. All that money spent, now the numbers aren't there, and that bill has come due. Time to pay the man. WHOOPS.