Posted on 05/12/2005 8:08:27 AM PDT by TXBSAFH
Wal-Mart profit misses forecast; outlook weak
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Wal-Mart Stores Inc. on Thursday reported a weaker-than-expected profit and said second-quarter results would miss Wall Street forecasts as steep energy prices and cool, wet weather cut spring sales.
Shares of Wal-Mart, which said gasoline prices would continue to curb consumer spending in the current quarter, fell 4 percent in premarket trading. The world's biggest retailer said it expects trends to improve in the second half and remained optimistic about the U.S. economy.
"Our results were not up to Wal-Mart standards," Chief Executive Officer Lee Scott said on a recorded message, citing steep oil prices and unusually cool, wet weather in parts of the United States.
EXCERPTED
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.netscape.cnn.com ...
Home equity will be zero by the end of the year, and Alan Greenspan will continue to turn the crank until it gets there.
And how will that happen? Exactly?
Rate hike, after rate hike, after rate hike; He is trying to cork inflation by limiting the money supply, and he can't do that until he sucks the extra liquidity out of real estate.
And how high will he have to hike to bring home equity down to 0%?
/S
According to the Federal Reserve home owners currently have 56.1% equity ($9.6223 trillion) in household real estate. You said that "Home equity will be zero by the end of the year, and Alan Greenspan will continue to turn the crank until it gets there". Housing prices would have to fall 56.1% on average for home equity to get to zero. Is that your prediction?
Maybe you exaggerated?
You need to realize theory and real world are not one and the same. Communism is a great system in theory... in practice if falls to pieces. Theories are not FACT, they are conjecture based on premises the authors take as fact, but may or may not be... Often the fundamental assumptions that theories are based on are flawed, so while the logic works great for nimrod 19 year olds taking macroecon 101... it falls apart in the real world.
Yeah, let's let the government decide what trade is best! While we're at it, why not just hand them over all of our money and let them allocate it to the best places? They know how to allocate our resources best, after all.
Uh, in case you missed it, Tarriffs and Treaties are now, and ALWAYS HAVE BEEN the exclusive right and duty of government to create, ratify and enforce.... I Hate to burst your little bubble, but you might want to put down your macroecon textbook and actually go read a little insignificant document called the Constitution. Your attempt at sacrasm on this one shows exactly how ignorant you are on this topic. I guess the founding fathers were just a bunch of dumb old white folk who didn't know jack.
What you think customs and social structures have to do with economics is beyond me.
Again, you show complete ignorance with this comment. If the social structures and customs of one nation are such that there is no such thing as private property rights or contract law that is enforceable, then they fundamentally are at uneven footing with a nation who does have and recognizes those rights. Customs and Culture are what dictact a nations laws, behaviors and world view.. it has great impact on their economies and economics.. you think otherwise... Go look at most of the 3rd world and see exactly how their customs and social norms affect their economics. In the middle east as a woman you go to the bank to withdraw your own money, guess what, the teller will keep 10% or more of what you want to withdraw, and you can do absolutely NOTHING about it... you don't think this affects their economics? Have you been there?
I would love to see a few instances of where history supports the case that protectionism is good for the economy. I'll be waiting.
Bilateral Trade agreements are not protetionism. You don't even understand it seems the very fundamentals of the discussion. When a nation is forced by unelectable fiat to comply or recind its laws at the bequest of an outside power, this is not the way to prosperity, and its not the way to greater economies. When the south was forced to integrate in the 60s... they didn't bring the black students up to whites levels... instead they lowered whites down to the blacks levels.... that's what happened in the public schools, and you can ask anyone who lived through it, and if they are honest they'll tell you. Multinational "free trade" organizations are the exact same principles just in play on the international playing field.
Free trade == more trade transactions. That is the difference. If trade transactions optimize allocative efficiency of resources, then obviously more trade transactions are better. It's not that hard to understand.
Again, get your nose out of the textbook and look at the REAL WORLD, where I actually live, work and see it day by day. What happened with NAFTA? All the US manufacturers who make heavy equipment (ie stuff that goes into manufacturing plants) saw a boom... as the plant build up in Mexico began... within a few years, they were not only no longer boooming, but they and the industries that they were building up down there went away... And please don't tell me it was a net gain... The numbers in my state alone don't agree remotely with that lie. As I have pointed out before to folks who can't get out of textbooks. manufacturing creates about 3.5 jobs for every manufacturing employee, in support and suppliers... Service creates about 1.5 jobs per employee... That's a FACT my friend... you can quote your textbook all day long, but out in the real world, fundamentals don't change just because some author says they should.
No, it's just difficult for you to make sense of things you don't understand.
No, I understand it perfectly, which is why I see it for the shell game that it is. Just because your textbook tells you something doesn't make it true. Free Trade is not a conservative principle, its not a panacea and its not what its sold to become. US Dollars pump wealth to dictatorial regimes, while real wages stagnate or are falling in the US.. Per household debts increase, foreclosures and bankruptcies are at all time highs... We fund our own enemies under threat of sanction from unelected bodies that aren't even made up of american citizens, we have deadly and unsafe trucks roll into the US from Mexico and we can do nothing about it.... etc, etc etc... Free Trade is a SCAM, its a fraud, and I don't care what your little text book tells you, its a lie. In the real world, which is where economics actually has to put rubber to the pavement.. you see relatively short term gains that are more than undercut by long term wage and standard of living depression. That's the reality of it.
Realizing it, and accepting it as an overall GAIN is an entirely different issue.
We should be happy we to subsidize the poor policies of another nation, and let our own people rely on public assitance because their jobs have been lost subsidizing another nations policies? What a warped view.
Its immorral and its wrong. I have said it before, I'll say it again, Capitalism unfettered has no less chance of dehumanizing the populace than the most totalitarian of regimes.
Hey, its a boom for industry A, who cares if it uses political prisoners in death camps to manufacturer it, and it puts our folks on the street in Industry B... as long as its cheaper for Industry A.. its all good... Be serious.
Every manufacturing job that leaves the US, for whatever reason requires no less than 3 service jobs to replace it to just keep a stable economy in terms of employment.. now lets not talk about REAL WAGES staying the same.. just in terms of EMPLOYMENT at all.. real wages, it doesn't even compare, Manufacturing always trumps service.. and PRODUCTION creates wealth, service does not remotely create wealth at the same levels.
Wage Stagnation has been going on in the US for quite some time... and its not going to let up anytime soon.
There’s also the Ross Perot contingent — or if you prefer, the Pat Buchanan contingent — of the perennially disappointed employment watchdogs. From the signing of NAFTA on through to last week’s jobs report, the household survey shows that nearly 20 million jobs have been created. The payroll survey shows even slightly more. Lou Dobbs will simply have to face the bad news that the good news about jobs is true.
Lovin’ Those “Disappointing” Jobs Reports (More bad news for the people who hate good news)
Communist states have plenty of jobs too. but, ditch digging, bed pan changing, and hair dressing are hardly the kind of jobs that we should be bragging about. Job creation is meaningless unless we know what is being created. We can create 500,000 jobs tomorrow by just by eliminating farm mechanization. Would that make us a stronger country?
Higher Debt per houshold in REAL DOLLARS.
Forclosures at all time highs.
Bankruptcies far higher as well.
Cost of higher education, has gone from 10% of a median household income per year for a year at Harvard to 400%.
And you blame all this on the expansion of free trade?
I'm not sure where you get your information from so let me provide you with an alternative to all the doom and gloom about household debt.
From the article: The idea that Americans are overspenders and undersavers and addicted to debt is all myth. Household balance sheets have never been more robust. Last year Americans increased their financial assets--checking accounts, money market funds, mutual funds, IRAs, etc.--by an impressive $590 billion. Credit card debt in-creased a paltry 4%. Take our financial household assets (not counting houses and other tangible assets such as automobiles and jewelry) and subtract liabilities such as mortgages and credit card debt, and the American consumers' total financial net worth comes to an eye-popping $26.1 trillion.
Here's more:
Assertion: The U.S. is a low-saving nation if you don’t count houses.
Response: This is incorrect. Including all the mortgage debt and none of the houses, the U.S. household sector is the world’s biggest net creditor ($37 trillion of financial assets versus $11 trillion of household debt) with one of the world’s fastest growing pools of liquid (non-house) savings (up $1.5 trillion in 2004). The personal-savings-rate statistic does not reflect or attempt to reflect actual changes in savings or the annual additions to savings, both of which have been large.
The number of consumer bankruptcies adjusted for population growth has increased but that is a result of legislation making it easier to declare bankruptcy more than any fundamental problems with the economy. Our government just passed legislation to rein this problem in.
When I asked about economic measurements, I was referring to things like: the unemployment rate which is now lower than at any other time in the past three decades, the home ownership rate, lowest interest rates in 40 years, personal net worth at an all time high, number of people invested in the stock market at an all time high, life expectancy at an all time high, solid GDP growth, the highest GDP per capita in history, the fact that we manufacture and export more goods now than at any other time in our history etc.
WTO has ruled against the US doing what is in US's inteerests many times... and will continue to do so
You think the U.S. always plays by the rules and other countries don't? That's just a little bit naive, don't you think?
Just in the past few months, the US was not allowed to keep unsafe Mexican Trucking off of US Roads.
In Florida, we allow 85 year-olds, who can't see over the dashboard and suffer from cataracts and dementia, to hurl two tons of steel down the road at 70 miles an hour.
And that's just the latest..
Other than a few Mexican Trucks on our roads, what has the WTO and NAFTA done to violate our sovereignty?
Free Trade is a scam, its not conservative and its not remotely based on conservative ideals or principles.
You still want to claim that Reagan, Buckley, Friedman, The Heritage Foundation, Cato, Hoover and all the others are not conservative? Where did you study economics?
Again, look a bit deeper...or better yet get out of the textbook and OUT into the real world. 20 Million jobs created, means nothing if the jobs are lower pay service jobs. The number of jobs is not nearly as important to sustainable and true growth as the quality of the jobs.
Look at REAL WAGES, not job numbers.. the fact is, REAL WAGES have been decreasing... Job Losses in my state alone directly attributed to NAFTA are indeed real... they come from the US Dept of Labor... hardly woudl they be out there lying about job losses. You need to stop looking at your little textbooks and your selective data, and look around.
Real Wages in America have been declining and continue to.
Foreclosures and BK's are at an all time high.
Household debt at an all time high.
Nation Debt at an all time high.
Etc. Etc. Etc.
The Cost of things to allow american's access to greater opportunities such as education have been skyrocketing well above the average rate of inflation. In 1972 a year at harvard was 2500 a year.. the median income was about 10k.. today nearly 30 years later median household income is about 42k and Harvard is 40k a year. 25% of the mean to 100% of the mean... And this is hardly a limited example.
Real Dollars, Household incomes have been stagnant, the only reason the impact hasn't been largely felt is because two income earners had been helping keep the wage stagnation countered.. however now it is to the point where even 2 incomes will not replace the income in real dollars of 1 income households in the 70s.
You need to get your nose out of your books and get out and deal with it day to day. Trade is good, free trade is a complete scam.. its not remotely conservative in its basis, and those that tout it at mantra by and large are simply ignorant of the realities, but pop woodies for the theories.
Dig a little deeper. 26.1 Trillion is the total, that's not the mean, the median or even the average. For example Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Ted Turner and a handful of others represent over a Trillion of that money alone. You don't get wealthy by owning new vehicles.. these are depreciating assets that will lose 60% of their value in the first 4 years of ownership... even remotely counting "car equtity" on a balance sheet is folly.
I deal with large numbers of folks, day in and day out who have nowhere near what they need, and I'm not just talking low income earners either, to survive a minor financial hiccup, let alone a major issue.
Banks are scared stiff over foreclosure numbers they know are coming.... More today than EVER before... that's not a fact that jives with your assertions. Consumer debt it at an irrational and unsustainable level.
I've done balance sheet analysis for lots of folks, and seen lots of folks who thought they had lots, wind up with little. A 5,000 dining room set, doesn't sell for $5000 dollars when you need to pay your past due bills, trust me.. I don't care what the blue book says its worth, it doesn't sell for that. When Mr. And Mrs. Yuppie couple hit that speed bump, that 70% of us are going to have over any 10 year period, most of them are no more equipped to handle it than the clost to minimum wage worker these days.
Look at the Median Income numbers, they are basically flat, some up here and there, but for the most part FLAT when adjusted for inflation over the last 30 years.. yet we have gone from a primarily 1 to a primarily 2 income household... If its taking 2 folks on average working to make the same real dollars as it took 1 on average to do 30 years ago.. you are not experiencing true growth.
Free Trade is a scam, its not conservative. Just because it has been embraced by some does not make it a conservative principle. In fact most of the FREE TRADE treaties are unconstitutional as far as I can tell. Bilateral agreements are tarrifs are spelled out in the constitution... multinational arbitrating boards with binding rights are not.
So, you can prove these 20 million jobs are lower paying? Link please.
Look at REAL WAGES, not job numbers.. the fact is, REAL WAGES have been decreasing...
Since NAFTA? Link please.
Household debt net worth at an all time high.
but pop woodies for the theories.
Projecting again?
Todd,
Go look for yourself, houshold median income is pretty much a flat line.. 1970 to today.. yet number of households that are now 2 income is vastly larger... if wages are increasing in real dollars.. the median should be a growing line though the entire time.. but its not.
Wake up to reality.. you can keep the blinders on, but you can't can't deny the facts. Just because they don't fit your "theorhetical model" doesn't mean they don't exist, or are incorrect.
Free trade is a scam, it creates short term booms, at long term cost.... but hey, if you wish to stay oblivious, your choice.
Fill in the word "Woman".
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