Sales of Sam’s Clubs stores open more that one year were up 4.6%.

“The Wal-Mart U.S. underlying business remains strong,” said Chief Financial Officer Tom Schoewe in a statement. “However, consumers and small business owners remain concerned about the economy, inflation and, most of all, higher gas prices.”

The increase in sales caused the company to raise their earnings forecast for the second quarter. They had been expecting earnings in th 78-81 cent per share range, but have revised the figures to the 82 to 84 cent range.

Logan is understandably upbeat about his new position.

“I’m very excited to be joining Harpo at time when the future for the company has never been brighter. The opportunity to work with the entire organization on ways we can further grow our content offerings across all our platforms and showcase our talent portfolio is truly an opportunity of a lifetime,” he said.

The Executive Vice President job puts Logan in charge of Harpo Radio, Harpo Print and Harpo Retail. He also will take the helm of Harpo’s expansion into digital and mobile initiatives. He’s also expected to help manage talent at the company.

Logan will start work in August. He comes to Harpo from XM Satellite Radio, where he was the Executive Vice President for programming and broadcast operations. He worked for XM since August 2004.

Harpo is the Oprah Winfrey entertainment conglomerate that has been growing rapidly in recent years.

The passel of worries that investors juggled Thursday added up to an increasingly troubled economy. Analysts’ negative comments on General Motors Corp. sent shares of the largest U.S. automaker to their lowest level in more than 30 years, while Citigroup Inc. fell sharply after an analyst placed a “sell” rating on the stock and warned investors to expect less from the brokerage sector in an uneasy economic climate. Disappointing outlooks from technology bellwethers Oracle Corp. and BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd. further soured investors’ moods and made the tech sector one of the steepest decliners.

Also troubling were reports that oil prices would continue to climb, pushing worldwide inflation higher than ever.

The President of OPEC Chakib Khelil said he though that oil prices could go to between $150-$170 a barrel before a pull back.

Stimulus checks have not stimulated the economy as had been hoped, primarily because people are spending their checks on higher costing commodities, especially gas. Worse yet, global inflation is rising which will increase the costs of goods even more for American consumers. All in all, it was a tough day for the bulls today on Wall Street.