The U.S. is becoming a retail wasteland. The Wall Street Journal reported last week that retailing executives fear the once-buoyant American consumer has entered a state of permanent frugality. The mall vacancy rate is at an 11-year high. With each passing month, a larger chunk of retail sales goes online. American retailers are increasingly staking their future overseas.

Uniqlo's Fifth Avenue Flagship

Somebody forgot to tell Uniqlo. The Japanese apparel retailer this week is opening a three-story, 89,000-square-foot flagship store on the corner of 5^th Avenue and 53^rd St. in Manhattan. The chain, which opened its first U.S. store in lower Manhattan in 2006, last year signed a $300 million, 15-year lease for the space, formerly the location of a Brooks Brothers store. It was reported to be the most expensive retail lease in New York's history.

And Uniqlo is likely coming to a mall near you in the near future. "We are looking at real estate in different cities throughout the United

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The American dream is alive and well for the wealthiest 1% of Americans, but unfortunately, if you are in the other 99% the jury is still out.

"America is obviously a country where you can go from being middle class to upper class, but right now class mobility has sort of collapsed in the United States," says Zaid Jilani, senior reporter for the progressive think tank ThinkProgress.org. (See: America's Middle Class Crisis: The Sobering Facts)

This grim reality is in part the impetus for the Occupy Wall Street movement, which, now in its fourth week, will take to the streets of Manhattan's Upper East Side Tuesday in what it is calling the "Millionaire's March." Demonstrators will rally outside the homes of some of the city's wealthiest, including News Corp. (NWS) head Rupert Murdoch and JPMorgan Chase (JPM) CEO Jamie Dimon, to protest New York state's 2% millionaire tax set to expire at the end of the year.

As the Occupy Wall Street movement