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Does this scenario describe you over the next few days: at the mall, standing in line as you struggle with all those shopping bags containing presents which will be left under the Christmas tree?

It's the vision retailers are happily painting this year and industry trade groups are more than eager to proclaim that this holiday season - the most important time for retailers - is wildly beating expectations. Retailers, desperate to bring in business and allure customers to the stores, made an unprecedented decision to open their doors on Thanksgiving Day. As if waiting in line at 5 a.m. for door busters wasn't terrible enough, many families cut short their Thanksgiving dinners to push, shove and fight other shoppers for just one of three high-definition televisions advertised at ridiculously low prices.

We hosted our very own retail boxing match here on The Daily Ticker set with Aaron Task as the announcer. Breakout's Jeff Macke and Fusion IQ's Barry Ritholtz are good friends but when it comes to retail, they can't seem to agree. The two sparred just a few weeks ago here on the show, debating the retail numbers promulgated by the National Retail Federation and comScore. They've decided to come back and settle their differences once and for all.

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Three-plus years since the subprime mortgage crisis -- aided and abetted by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- triggered the collapse of Lehman and bailouts of the big banks and AIG, scant little progress has been made to safeguard the markets, investors or the economy.

To add insult to injury, the big banks are bigger and more profitable than ever, but still not a single person has been held accountable for causing the worst recession since the Great Depression.

"Nothing has changed since AIG," says Nomi Prins, author of Black Tuesday. "These companies are too complex [and] the regulators too inept."

The most recent fallout from lack of regulatory oversight of the banking and investing industry is the collapse of MF Global, run by former Goldman Sachs CEO Jon Corzine. A stunning $1.2 billion in client funds are still missing more than month after the company buckled on fears of its leveraged bets on European debt. (See: It's the Leverage,