It's almost impossible to sell without a huge discount.

"They have hundreds of free parking spaces and on top of all that, they're selling at a huge discount."

"Hong Kong hotel chains are selling at a huge discount to book," he said.

But miners may still buy vouchers at huge discounts, with the difference made up by their mine or trade union.

To reduce the huge discounts, fund managers began buying back shares on the open market.

American companies have said they could not match such huge discounts.

"Look, retailers already gave huge discounts: 25, 30, 40 percent off," she said.

"Because they had little money and were so thirsty for new things, we used to give them huge discounts," she said.

The sad fact is, despite the huge discounts, consumers see little in the way of cost relief.

With deregulation, however, carriers began offering huge discounts to customers.