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.
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(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.netscape.cnn.com ...
You haven't posted any facts on this entire thread. Conversely, others have posted numerous links to facts easily debunking your feelings.
I've done balance sheet analysis for lots of folks, and seen lots of folks who thought they had lots, wind up with little
Herein lies the problem. You are drawing broad, emotional conclusions from anecdotes in your little corner of the world without any consideration to what's going on outside.
This fact alone makes you uniquely unqualified to be lecturing anyone about getting into the real world.
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.
From The Conservative Heritage Foundation:
"The coming stories about flat real wages in 2004 bring to mind many counter-arguments. First, we might note that inflation statistics have been overstated for decades, as described by the Boskin Commission and many nonpartisan economists, which implies that real earnings have been underestimated. Or we could compare Americans’ after-tax incomes, which are much higher after the passage of the 2001 and 2003 tax cut packages. Or we could talk about how consumption remains robust. Or we could ponder the dramatic rise in non-wage employee benefits.
Look at the graph in the link below showing an upward slope in real wages and tell me where they are wrong.
The Real Story on "Stagnant Wages"
Did real incomes increase after the recent tax cuts?
Are you looking at total compensation numbers? Could employers be picking up a large proportion of the dramatic increase in health-care costs? If not, shouldn't that be considered part of the equation since it means more money in the pockets of workers?
It's impossible to tell where you get your numbers since you refuse to share any of your sources.
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
Which is it,"fact" or "as far as you can tell"?
If it's fact, please show us any lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of these treaties. If it's the latter, well, it's nothing more than feelings....
Fine. Believe what you want. It's still drawn from emotion. I have no problem with anecdotes unless you try and draw broad conclusions from then. At that point they need to backed up with some facts so we can debate the issue based on whose facts better support the assertion. On this particular thread, the providing of facts has been a one-way street.
You can trust the reports if they suit you, but when someone tells you that they do not trust your source, you best accept it as a fact that they do not believe the conclusions drawned from your statistics.
Fine again. Feel free to offer any sources that prove I am wrong. I have no problems admitting that, it's just going to take more than feelings to do so.
If you want to pursuade you have best find clearer evidence and a better presentation.
You mean like trying to prove that Reagan didn't really mean what he said about free trade?
I think Reagan was the kind of man who said what he meant and meant what he said. Gorbachev would probably back me up on that.
You still want to make an argument that Reagan, Buckley, Friedman, all the folks at Heritage, Hoover and Cato are useful idiots?
Whose assertion do you think Mona Charen (she wrote the book) would support, your or mine?
I'm sorry, but when all the crunched real world data verifies a theory, not believing in it is just willful stupidity.
Communism is a great system in theory... in practice if falls to pieces.
Communism is a great system in theory only if your theory is that it's a great system. Anyone with a Lockean point of view would not need a test case to know immediately that communism would not work.
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,
Theories are not a fact; they explain facts. It's funny how you say "Often the fundamental assumptions that theories are based on are flawed" and yet seem to find it inconcievable that your self-contrived theories are so rigorously derived as to stand up against the past 200 years worth of work in economics.
so while the logic works great for nimrod 19 year olds taking macroecon 101... it falls apart in the real world.
How many years have you been on this earth, old man? You'd think you would have found time by now to get some book-learning. Of course, why learn about a subject when you can just count yourself an expert and everyone who disagrees with you de facto wrong even if they are supported by an entire field of study?
Anyway, I would have to imagine that its quite the self-esteem dampener to find yourself of inferior reading to some nimrod 19 year old, especially in subjects in which you fancy yourself an expert.
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
So are taxes.
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.
So you would support it if the government taxed the majority (or all) of our money, right? It follows from your "the founding fathers let the government have this power therefore the government can do no wrong with it" philosophy.
The founding fathers weren't idiots, but apparently some of their descendants are.
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
That is not a custom or social structure. Or is it customs and social structures through which you believe the right to private property is derived?
or contract law that is enforceable
Add Civics 101 to your extensive educational deficiencies.
then they fundamentally are at uneven footing with a nation who does have and recognizes those rights.
Great! We have the advantage! So let's exlpoit it.
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?
That is as stupid as saying that "Bioinformatics has
everything to do with economics! People are responsible for economics and they're biological so. . . ." It's as stupid as saying that economics is a result of Maxwell's equations since they govern the electrochemical reactions in our brains. The fact that you can make up social contexts for invidual financial transactions no more places economics under the jurisdiction of sociology than the the fact that traditional algebra problems are phrased situationally with colliding trains places algebra under the jurisdiction of locomotive theory.
It obviously doesn't matter whether there's 10% tax which originates from custom or one which has come because space aliens though it would be a good idea. The economy is impacted by the
existence of the tax, not the reason that it's there.
Bilateral Trade agreements are not protetionism.
And permitting people to speak is not contrary to free speech. However, if you have to ask permission, it clearly is not an environment conducive to freespeech. Likewise, if you have to negotiate to establish the ability to trade, there is protectionism going on.
You don't even understand it seems the very fundamentals of the discussion.
Somehow you have managed a syntactically correct sentence which makes no contextual sense. Which discussion, our discussion or the issue in general? In the later case, by your own confession you have disavowed yourself from the "discussion" and mock me because I have studied it. In the former case, I am responsible for half the content of this discussion and am certainly well-acquainted with my own beliefs. Very fundamentals could either be what is very fundamental (which would be a redundancy) or simply an emphasis of fundamentals, which leaves its placement in your response inexplicable as it doesn't have anything to do with the surrounding arguments. In fact, in general I can find no reason for this sentence' existence other than that perhaps you felt you were not meeting your quota of random swipes.
When a nation is forced by unelectable fiat to comply or recind its laws at the bequest of an outside power,
"Unelectable fiat"? You clearly misunderstand the meaning of at least one of those words. Name for me an instance of where we have been forced to rescind one of our laws at another nation's bequest.
this is not the way to prosperity, and its not the way to greater economies.
Neither is smearing pudding on ourselves. "Unelectable fiat... is not the way to prosperity." Imagine that! I'm not whether this classes as a strawman argument or simply non sequitor.
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.
Yes, because we all know the South had such a good education system before those darned integrationists came a long! Do you know how long the South has suffered from high illeracy? From the nation's inception up until a matter of decades ago. IQ tests administered during WWII showed indviduals from the south as consistently scoring lower. Don't tell me that in the few years between then and Brown vs. Board of Education they suddenly developed a dazzling education system. Education in the south sucked as much in 1940 and 1930 as it did in 1950.
In fact, half a century after integration the south is finally seeing high literacy rates. If you want to make these silly correlations, the one you should be making is that integration improved education in the south.
And comparing market forces to social racial issues is patently absurd.
Multinational "free trade" organizations are the exact same principles just in play on the international playing field.
I thought you were a fan of bilater trade agreements. Now you are opposed to them? Or only if they implement free trade? Ah, I see, trade agreements are evil unless they support your agenda, in which case they are ok.
Again, get your nose out of the textbook
Who would need a book to understand something that simple?
and look at the REAL WORLD, where I actually live, work and see it day by day. What happened with NAFTA?
2 million new jobs per year between 1993 and 2001?
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...
Yes, because the only thing effecting how well heavy equipment manufacturers do is whether trade with Mexico is untaxed.
FYI, over the past 10 years under NAFTA U.S. manufacturing output has increased 41%, contrasted with 34% in the preceding decade. The first 5 years of NAFTA saw the addition of a half-million U.S. manufacturing jobs.
And please don't tell me it was a net gain... The numbers in my state alone don't agree remotely with that lie.
I think you're the one lying. Let's see your numbers.
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... No, it's stupid. First of all, it's an idiotic way to measure things. If a manufacuring plant fires their work force and hires a new one that is twice as large but half as efficient, you're telling me that this will double the amount of jobs the plant creates elsewhere? Why? Explain that. Second, what you state is a mathematical infeasibility. If employment reciprocally creates employment, there should be infinitely many jobs, which is impossible (ironic, given your previous sentiments, that you would propose a theory that is realistically invalid). Clearly, there should be asymptotic functions lurking around somewhere, not your impossible flat rates. Finally, in light of that, I would love to know the source for your "statistic."
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.
It's not the authors, it's everyone who has studied economics, who has crunched the numbers, and who analyzed the real world effects of economic policies. The authors just put into writing what everyone who understands basic economics already knows, so that people such as you, who have not crunched the numbers and do not understand economics, can learn.
How many economic studies have you conducted to verify your assertions? Where did you get your data? What analytical methods did you use?
No, I understand it perfectly, which is why I see it for the shell game that it is. A shell game that seems to work. Or why don't you go move to uber-protectionist India or North Korea and enjoy their luxuriant economies while I remain to wallow in the misery of free trade participants such as the United States?
Just because your textbook tells you something doesn't make it true.
Just because some ignoramus on the internet whose never read a book on the subject he thinks he's an expert in tells me something doesn't make it true. In fact, all it makes is an unsubstantiated conjecture by a very uninformed individual.
Free Trade is not a conservative principle,
In as much as small, non-obtrusive government is a conservative principle, free trade certainly is.
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..
You do realize the more expensive goods are, the more real wages are reduced, right? International competition/specialization increases real wages by driving the price of consumer goods.
Per household debts increase, foreclosures and bankruptcies are at all time highs...
And your solution is to add additonal costs to the economy? Yeah, I can totally see how making everything more expensive woudl decrease private debt and bankruptcies...
We fund our own enemies under threat of sanction from unelected bodies that aren't even made up of american citizens,
Name for me one of these mysterious unelected bodies that has threatened us with sanctions.
we have deadly and unsafe trucks roll into the US from Mexico
Deadly, huh? What's the casuality rate?
Free Trade is a SCAM, its a fraud, and I don't care what your little text book tells you, its a lie.
Funny how the "lie" is supported by the numbers and the individuals who dedicate their lives to studying economic effects, and yet the "truth" is backed up by, let's see, what was it? oh yes, your own impressions on your experiences. Forgive me if I'm skeptical.
you see relatively short term gains that are more than undercut by long term wage and standard of living depression.
Do tell which particular instances it is you're thinking of.
That's the reality of it.
The reality is that your personal opinions are dwarfed by real science.
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