This Buisnessweek article has the air of trying hard to ignore the story to focus on the story. It’s about how Wal-Mart’s growth is slowing down, and how this is supposed to be some kind of catastrophe for the Wal-Mart empire. But saying that Wal-Mart has a problem is studiously ignoring the problem.

The problem is that whatever sales momentum there is at Wal-Mart is coming from the lowest-margin items at its stores—staples like food and $4 drugs. Indeed, company executives have said in the past they would rather take a hit on profits from these items to attract a large amount of shoppers into its stores who will then stock up on higher-margin goods like apparel. But that’s not happening. Even gift cards, which are usually viewed as something people would use for goods to treat themselves, were being redeemed in January for basics like food.

The article tries quite hard to fault Wal-Mart’s marketing, especially of apparel, in contrast to Target, although “Wal-Mart’s fourth-quarter same-store sales rose 1.7%, which beat Target.” My own take is that Wal-Mart needs to worry a lot more about its overall customer satisfaction and a lot less about keeping up with the Joneses. I think Wal-Mart is showing more of the impact of the “dust” in the economic slowdown than this article credits. If you are going to go in debt, why shop at Wal-Mart? While you are whipping plastic, go for the prize bull and shop upscale. The people who are still playing out their credit are shopping elsewhere, while more upscale markets haven’t hit the end of their credit line yet. When that happens, Wal-Mart’s growth will probably look pretty good again.