Karen M. Hoguet: There will be actions taken that may, for example, reduce the approval rate but at this point we do not see that as having a risk to the sales line.

Wayne Hood (BMO Capital Markets): Is the assumption that the default ratios and delinquency ratios would peak in the back-half of the year?

Karen M. Hoguet: I believe so.

Uta Werner (Sanford Bernstein): Do you have any expectations on the tax rebate checks and to what extent you might see a benefit later in the year?

Karen M. Hoguet: We do not have any expectations for seeing a benefit. We would like to but realistically, I do not think we are going to see a big percentage of those checks.

Uta Werner (Sanford Bernstein): You had a conference with your 750 key vendors. In this difficult environment, what is your assessment of the health of these vendors?

Karen M. Hoguet: We have confidence that we will be able to work with the vendors, so that is not a concern of mine.

Michael Exstein (Credit Suisse): Are you seeing any change in shopping patterns in terms of days of the week, or anything else like that?

Karen M. Hoguet: I have not heard that we have experienced anything there.

Michael Exstein (Credit Suisse): Several of your competitors have had to deal with inventories in a more delayed fashion than you all. What are you seeing competitively out there?

Karen M. Hoguet: We have not seen that having an impact on us. Typically when a retailer gets over-inventoried and starts taking markdowns that does not have a big impact on us.

Michael Exstein (Credit Suisse): The four stores that you announced in the Southwest, are there going to be any offsetting closings to those or are you just bringing the net exposure to that area up?

Karen M. Hoguet: Those are incremental additions.

Charles Grom (J.P. Morgan): Earlier you alluded to how you expect gross profit margins in the rest of the year to improve more so than what you did in the first quarter. Does that mean you expect GPM to be up or just perform better than the first quarter?

Karen M. Hoguet: What we said is, and again, this relates to sales trend, but we would hope that they would be flattish to up.

Charles Grom (J.P. Morgan): How Bloomy’s performed in the quarter, given what we are hearing from some of the other high-end luxury retailers in terms of comps?

Karen M. Hoguet: Like the other high-end retailers, Bloomingdale’s had a difficult quarter. They still are doing better than Macy''s but worse than they had been doing.

Charles Grom (J.P. Morgan): In August you started calling out home as a much better area, so this quarter it was mixed. Is it because you are facing some difficult compares or if there was some product miscues?

Karen M. Hoguet: Big ticket home continued to be strong, particularly mattresses. In the small ticket areas, I said housewares were strong. Textiles were weaker, so I would still say in total home was okay.

Steve Cirro (Conning Asset Management): The stores you plan to open this year, will they be owned or leased?

Karen M. Hoguet: Those are not stores that we are opening the ones that were announced yesterday. Those will be opened in future years.