it's funny but if you go on the website now it directs you to something about the history of the store and you know what to me it looks like it had nothing to do with the economy but it started to become poorly run, in 1999 they made 12 billion dollars I really think the big problems for them started in 2003 when they converted to a single hourly pay structure in all stores, eliminating commissioned sales, by doing that you completely take the customer service out of the store and only need to hire less qualified people to do the job.
Heres the link to the history:
http://investor.circuitcity.com/history.cfm