To the DNC for the '10 elections.
Posted on 10/16/2009 8:00:56 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Stocks are up. Jobs are down. So if you're an investor you're enjoying a vibrant recovery and if you're a worker it still feels like a grinding recession.
Since bottoming out in March, the stock market has soared by about 60 percent, one of the most awesome rallies in market history. The Dow Jones Industrial Average cracking 10,000 may not be strategically significant, but it's a psychological breakthrough that's worth cheering after the demoralizing crash that preceded it.
While the Dow has been racing upward, however, the unemployment rate has also skyrocketed, from 8.5 percent in March to 9.8 percent now. The economy has lost 7.2 million jobs since the recession began at the end of 2007, and the trend is still going the wrong way. The unemployment rate will almost certainly hit 10 percent and hover near there for awhile in 2010, before gradually declining.
So are job losses good for the stock market? Actually, yes. At least for awhile. Stocks are rising because many companies are earning more money than analysts have expected. But earnings aren't up because companies are selling more stuff; most companies are still selling less stuff and grappling with falling revenue. Instead, earnings are rising because companies have cut their costs more than revenues have fallen. And "costs" are often the same as "jobs." Consider these snippets from some recent earnings reports:
Johnson & Johnson. Third-quarter revenue was down 5.3 percent but net earnings rose 1.1 percent.
Domino's Pizza. Third-quarter revenue down 6 percent; net earnings up 77 percent.
Abbott Labs. Third-quarter revenue up 3.5 percent; net earnings up 36.5 percent.
Pepsi. Third-quarter revenue down 1.5 percent; net earnings up 9.5 percent.
Alcoa. Third-quarter revenue up 9 percent, compared with the second quarter; net earnings swung from a $459 million loss to a $124 million profit.
All of those companies have laid off workers over the last two years, probably necessary to keep the company healthy. And it's worth keeping in mind that when earnings outperform revenue, it's a sign that the company is well-run (assuming there's no Enron-style hocus-pocus). But CEOs also know that you can't grow a company or keep juicing the stock price by cutting costs and slashing jobs. Real growth only comes from new customers, new business, and increased revenue. And on that measure, the outlook is murky for the stock and job markets both.
The same workers who have been getting laid off, improving the cost profile for many companies, are also consumers running out of money to spend. Some are going bankrupt, defaulting on bank loans, and losing their homes. That's a major risk to corporate profits—and stock prices—down the road.
Some companies will be able to coast for awhile. The weak dollar and relatively strong economies in Asia and parts of Europe and South America, for example, are good news for U.S. exporters, since it helps them offset weak U.S. sales with stronger business overseas. And more-efficient companies can withstand lean times longer. But most American companies still rely on American consumers to keep business humming. Sooner or later, the U.S. job and stock markets need to go in the same direction.
The question is whether the job market will hitch onto the coattails of the stock market, with companies starting to hire as their fortunes improve—or stocks will turn south as the ranks of the unemployed swell. Good thing workers and investors both have become familiar with uncertainty.
Until there aren't enough people working who can afford their products.
Why is the market improving but there are few jobs? Because for a number of years now the market has not been a very good indicator for the economy. It does not take a genius to realize that stocks might do well but if the companies behind those stocks no longer primarily employ americans or use american suppliers then they have created an ever growing pool of people who at some point will not be able to buy their stocks for pensions and who will no longer be able to buy their services and products. The total economy is not the markets, it is americans producing and buying and pumping their money through the system. As fewer people have productive jobs in the private sector they are going to buy fewer goods and services and when that demand drops more people lose jobs.
Yes. Exactly, who is going to buy or use their products. I think the switch from a maufacturing/agricultural economy to a Service economy has destroyed any memory of how economies actually work.
There's a very simple reason for this: hiring and laying off people is expensive. Therefore, you don't want to start hiring the minute business starts to pick up and stock prices start rising. It could be just a blip, in which case you might end up firing those very same people you just hired, and that costs money.
So you wait until you are reasonably sure the recovery is set in, after the market has been rallying for a while, before you start to hire new people.
The stock market, on the other hand, is all about the future and responds immediately to changing expectations.If investors begin to expect the economy to start improving soon, their expectations of future cash flows will have gone up, and that will prompt them to bid up stock prices, even before business actually improves.
Folks, there's nothing to see here. Move along.
That's got to be one of the stupidest things I've read here in a while.
By your logic, no company should ever hire anyone.
Unless taxes on businesses are reduced we could be looking at the “full employment” being achieved at 8 or 9 percent unemployment.
No big surprise. The stock market starts going up about 6 months before the end of a recession (average since 1920). Employment starts growing 1 or 2 months after the recession ends.
Happens almost every time. It looks the same as usual. The people who say “this time it is different” need to look again at all the indicators that say “same as usual”.
Real economic growth comes when those not needed in their old jobs find new ones.
In Japan, in contrast, in a downturn the companies didn't adjust and fire anyone, and locked up all the real resources needed to grow again. Result - lost decade.
I'll take the turmoil and the growth freedom brings, thank you very much.
Economic growth and sitting on your backside are contradictory. You can have one or the other, not both.
Bump
Welcome to FRee Republic.
He is for limited abortions, and for some form of gay marriage, even predicting that they are inevitable (quoting the Boies / Olsen argument).
And brags about his financial success, without pressing for moral values or talking about national defense.
Smells like a RINO at first pass.
Cheers!
And the voting booth.
And online chat rooms.
And the larger culture.
And lawsuits of the sort that WallStreetCapitalist is bragging about.
See a trend here?
Cheers!
On a personal level, one of the greatest gifts God gave me were my parents. My father's parting words to me when he dropped me off at college were: "You are now responsible for making your dreams come true." The message was clear: Anything I wanted in life, from the moment they drove away, I had to earn on my own. Some of my friends thought it was cold, yet it was liberating, exciting - and, yes, scary. I knew that he had just handed the keys over to me, so to speak, and I wanted to make him proud. Even today, I sometimes say it aloud to myself when we are working on launching a new business or taking a risk in one field or another.
When people behave as you described, they are often unable to stay in one place for long. This includes employment, friendships, and family relationships. Although far from perfect, it's nearly impossible to fool everyone all of the time. In the end, he'll usually end up getting what he deserves.
Another possibility is the idea of where in an economic system one's skills reside. Typically, by the time I see a man or woman, they've had to acquire some pretty impressive skills, either in graphic art, coding, or finance (almost everything else, we can teach). Someone who has a sense of entitlement probably didn't make it through that far so I'm not sure I get to see this side of my age group because of the natural filtration that exists in my industry. It also helps that our business model allows us to work only with people I like, admire, and trust. In other words, if I were operating a call center business, I'm sure I'd have plenty of experiences dealing with the type of person you described because the "barriers to entry", in economic parlance, are relatively low. It's also possible that whoever did the hiring at your firm was just a dumb*ss, if you'll pardon my candor. That's why I love pay for performance models. People should be judged solely on what they accomplish - not on what they know, what their resume looks like, or who they've worked for in the past. Rockefeller was a clerk at a commodities firm in Ohio. Carnegie worked as a telegraph operator. Their resumes were not impressive until later in life, when their accomplishments made them stand out from the crowd.
2.) I argued that whether or not someone agrees with gay marriage (which is a huge issue of debate within even my own family - you should see our last Thanksgiving), it is clear why Ted Olson is one of the most brilliant lawyers on the planet because he is arguing a technical point related to gender equality. Even if someone completely disagrees with him, that is freaking brilliant.
If you want to know where I stand on specific issues, or you want to know what my moral values are for me and my family, why don't you just ask like a man? And nowhere - literally nowhere - have I bragged about my finances or businesses. I've provided a viewpoint, entirely factual, based upon my own experiences so that we can discuss them and make the Republic stronger.
If you want to know how I feel about a specific issue, ask me. Like most 20-somethings, my perspective is different (not better, just different) from those who are older.
And what really ticks me off = Even in what you call my "support" for abortions, I said that for my family, in the case of a rape, I don't think we could ever have an abortion under any circumstances, even rape, because the love of Christ is a higher, and harder standard that to which we are accountable as Christians.
To the DNC for the '10 elections.
False. Not with the principal parasites on the U.S. economy...the Chi-Coms keeping their peg to the dollar...after lying and saying they were going to 'float'.
Trade Imbalance still FIVE TO ONE.
As a new member, your deceitful twisting of my personal views on abortion (when I said flatly and boldly that because the love of Christ is a higher standard to which we, as born again Christians must adhere, it isn't acceptable at all for me and my family even in the most understandable circumstances such as rape or incest) is inexcusable.
How I could be any clearer on that is beyond me. Understanding the emotions of anger someone feels is not acceptance. Understanding their pain is not acceptance. Acknowledging that those are rational positions for the woman (and her husband and children) who was violated to feel in the hours and days after an attack, is not acceptance. I understand how a father murders the pedophile that violated his son. I don't accept it and I don't condone it. But I understand his pain and why, in the initial days, he believes he's doing the right thing, no matter how misguided. To some how say that I'm providing a moral stamp of approval for that murder is just a lie. There's no other way to categorize it.
Not cool, man. Not cool. If you disagree with something on principal, or believe that I've made a mistake in the facts, that's why these forums exist. To twist something I said and flat-out lie about something so important really, really ticks me off.
Welcome! You will find that FR offers sanctuary to a small colony of the most black-hearted Old Testament Retributionists to be found anywhere on the Internet. Don't take offense - it's a battle you can't win. Simply avoid them.
Your post #45 was right on. Two thumbs up. :)
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