Posted on 05/31/2011 7:05:20 PM PDT by khnyny
To gaze upon the world of American corporations is to see a sunny place of terrific profits and princely bonuses. American businesses reported that third-quarter profits in 2010 rose at an annual rate of $1.659 trillion, the steepest annual surge since officials began tracking such matters 60 years ago. It was the seventh consecutive quarter in which corporate profits climbed.
Staring at such balance sheets, you might almost forget that much of the nation lives under slate-gray fiscal skies, a place of 9.4 percent unemployment and record levels of foreclosures and indebtedness.
And therein lies the enduring mystery of this Great Recession and Not So Great Recovery: Why have corporate profits (and that market thermometer, the Dow) spiked even as 15 million Americans remain mired in unemployment, a number without precedent since the Great Depression? Employment tends to lag a touch behind profit growth, but history offers few parallels to what is happening today.
“Usually the business cycle is a rising-and-falling, all-boats-together phenomenon,” noted J. Bradford DeLong, an economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and a deputy assistant secretary for economic policy in the Clinton Treasury Department. “It’s quite a puzzle when you have this disjunction between profits on the one hand and unemployment.”
A search for answers leads in several directions. The bulls’ explanation, heard with more frequency these days, has the virtue of being straightforward: corporate profits are the economy’s pressure cooker, building and building toward an explosive burst that will lead to much hiring next year.
The December jobs numbers suggest that that moment has yet to arrive, as the nation added just 103,000 jobs, or less than the number needed to keep pace with population growth. The leisure industry and hospitals accounted for 83,000 jobs; large corporations added a tiny fraction.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Exactly. That's why some government is necessary to set the rules of the marketplace so that businesses act in the interest more in the interest of the U.S.
Businesses acting on the profit motive will outsource overseas everything they can. And those that don't will be out of business. Unless government steps in and changes the rules to make it more profitable to keep operations here.
Huh?
What is your comment in relation to?
None of the “free trade” policies established by free traitor Robert Zoellick have been changed or modified by the Obama administration.
Don’t throw out red herring arguments please stay on topic.
That said, the Bush administration ‘stimulated’ the economy for years after the dot com bomb by funneling extremely large amounts of money into the stock market to prop it up. That was a payback to the transnational trash global corporations that feign to be American because they are incorporated here.
Admittedly Obama didn’t feel a need for stealth, he doesn’t care so he just pushed the TARP QE2 and the unconstitutional government takeover of the auto industry in the US.
The institutions in the USA are globalist profiteers whose mission is for us to forget the concept of support of country. For them it's all about global profits and the nation be damned.
These institutions have been aided and abetted by globalists that inhabit both Parties. Some even masquerade as conservatives. If you liked the League of Nations you're going to love the new world UN order where the concept of nation states with their own laws is obsolete.
Multi-national corporatism is driving the march, because they don't want national laws such as controlled borders and the Bill of Rights that impede their flexibility and power. They want their own paid private armies too. Their paid media mouthpieces make it sound as if the march to free trade (and open borders and the UN) is next to Godliness. But these proponents forget what comes next.
Great points!
So many posters here don’t know that free citizens have a duty to their country. The current crop of corporate citizens are ‘citizens of the world’ in their nomenclature, and have no loyalty, sense of duty or responsibility to the country that has enabled their great wealth.
These corporations are cynical looters by their actions, filled with people who want the rest of us to serve the country, and pay the taxes to supply an unending bank account for their treason.
GE, for example, forced, by corruption of our government, the ban of US made incandescent bulbs for poison fluorescent garbage made in China. This wasn’t the free market but callous manipulation of our government ‘for profit’. They paid NO taxes last year and in fact TOOK tax money from our government as a ‘subsidy’.
Honestly GE and companies like them should have their US incorporation revoked, and their directors have their US citizenship revoked. They also should be tried and imprisoned for their overt corruption of the US government.
Oooh, a “free traitor” talking point!
Seen it many many times before.
I don’t know what industry you work in, but in mine, and many others, we all work 50-60 hours a week, every week- as exempt employees, no overtime or any other compensation. Its a bit like slavery in a way, so many uncompensated hours— what the “free traitors” seek.
You see, when these corporations shed workers, the rest of us have to do their jobs too, making the US worker extremely productive, and enhancing profits for the corporations here while effectively giving our labor away for the excess hours over 40.
Yep.
The New York Times trying to figure out why the economy is slow is like the Nazis trying to figure out why the Jews are disappearing....
Let me give you a brief history lesson. There was only a tiny military until the War with Mexico. In fact, it was so small that indian tribes defeated it until Anthony Wayne took charge in the 1790s. The War of 1812 almost turned into a disaster because the Jeffersonians had weakened the military so much. And a British army of 5,000 troops BURNED down our capital.
After the Mexican War the army shrank again to miniscule size. It had to be built anew when the Slavers tried to destroy the Union. It shrank again to small size after their defeat. As did the government. This happened again after the Spanish American War and WWI AND WWII though after the latter the army was still large. Had our army not been retained at a larger size the cost of fighting the Soviets would have been much greater and possibly unsuccessful.
You really should read and UNDERSTAND the constitution before blathering on about what it says. It mentions Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises as means of raising revenue. “Taxes” was NOT limited to tariffs. Had it been intended to be only tariffs the Founders would have said so. They had no problem excluding several forms of taxation: export taxes, and certain taxes by states nor did they have a problem of specifying how “direct” or capitation taxes were to be levied. So your statement regarding tariffs as the only constitutional tax is dead wrong as Article I, Section 8 and 9 clearly show.
Shrinking the size of the fedgov was not a part of this conversation but you should recognize the fact that it would INCREASE the power of the corporations you pillory. And it should be clear that it is the size it is because that is what the voters wanted. In order to change that one must change their minds about it.
Of course, we don’t have to trade with any other nation. We can become an economic backwater trying to hide from the realities of the world until they explode in our faces.
Free Trade maximizes everyone’s overall freedom and wealth not just the “few” the Left is always touting as our enemy.
Spouting off crackpot ideas doesn’t address any “holes” but only show the degree of your ignorance and just how brainwashing by the Left is infecting even a site like this.
This is the danger of Class Warfare.
While Free Trade has never truly existed for political reasons, the closer we get to it the more efficiently economic resources are allocated, the higher production/employment and wealth levels (in both nations) are achieved and the more competition improves everyone’s economies.
But you and Ron Paul seem to be more concerned with punishing other nations rather than raising economic output.
Business doesn’t owe you or anyone shit!
Your view of American history is through rose-colored glasses and does not reflect reality. Have you ever heard the term “Robber Barons”? Have you any knowledge of how the railroads, big steel, and other huge corporations controlled state legislatures across the land to get what they wanted?
People became so fed up with that “partnership” that they actually turned to the fedgov to remove it with Anti-Trust laws. Once corporations grow past the bounds of the nation they have other concerns. International corporations exist because they do something better than others and grow in response to the World Economy’s markets. That is a good thing.
Profit is the signal the market gives to companies to increase their production and sales. It is a GOOD thing, the only thing which allows a company to grow and hire more workers. Attacks on profits are attacks on the labor force.
The government has no right to tell business where they can make products.
If I started a new product it sure wouldn’t be made here.
Seige Heil, mine Fuhrer.
My comment was in relation to the Code Pink view of the world. No War for Oil remember.
I don’t think there is a protractor big enough to measure the tangent I just read.
Ah, yeah they do. My tax dollars pay to protect their sorry asses.
Corporate fascism has come to America. Really, it is new form of fascism, as the type first practiced in Europe, Germany and Italy, required corporations to support the citizens and govt. of their host country, at least there was the pretext of national pride. The fascist that run our corps nowadays don't even pretend to do that.
See ya. Don't let me stop you. I understand that Cathay Pacific™ has low cost flights daily to China.
What does this idiotic response mean? That you’re a free traitor and you don’t want loyal American citizens to have any authority in their own government?
And apparently you’re the only one talking about it. LOL
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.