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 ...
I agree wholeheartedly. It’s time Americans (U.S. Citizens) put America (The United States of America) first.
How much debt do these companies have?
“I think you are correct in that free trade is not necessarily the answer in all cases especially in the case of those nations that trade unfairly,i.e,China.”
The Kenyan Pirate takes public stances against world leaders who alledgedly persecute “labor organizers”, then acts as though doing business with the Red Chinese slave colony is the most natural thing (I know that relationship is not his doing, and was helped along by many Republicans as well). If we only traded with companies that met our ideal for work and environmental conditions, those countries would be as costly as the US to deal with.
Two words... I agree.
LLS
Sorry, my mistake. Most industrial sectors of Western Europe trade fairly with us but only because their business environment is as uncompetitive as we are. If we are ever allowed to enter a Fair Trade agreement with Columbia I think they would trade fairly. Although Latin America does nor care for we gringos up North, they have traded fairly and there is a decent balance of trade with them.
You can be a producer and still screw people.
“Machines don’t call in sick and contractors can be shed immediately.”
They also don’t get workers compensation, benefits, and vacation...our job market is resembling Europe’s (20% unemployment in some countries).
The problem is that as long as either side of a trade agreement has warped, excessive environmental or labor laws in comparison to the other signatory, the agreement isn’t really fair. NAFTA and European agreements aren’t really fair in the sense that we whip Europe’s butt when it comes to economic freedom and envirolaws, while Mexico has laughable regulation on both compared to us. From a pragmatic standpoint, the only truly free trade we have in this world is intra-state. That’s why Mexico is still bitchin’ about us denying their truckers the right to traipse across our landscape leaving a trail of retreads behind them. 8^)
Why did we go to war in Iraq? Nobody has really explained that credibly. Our embargo of Cuba was spurred by Castro’s nationalization of US companies’ assets - we certainly have no problem with his Red Chinese brethren (who are even worse than him, and are “preferred trading partners”).
What war have “our” businesses ever lost money on?
We need to face reality and facts. It was America that foolishly sacrificed and gave away its own economic future and market share so that China's economy could be boosted. Thus China and others could compete with America for natural resources and military power and provide a new markets. This was done because the multi-national China first corporations own our traitorous US Congress.
What rational patriotic reason could there be for continuing to purposely give away what was once the most robust manufacturing economy on Earth to the benefit of other nations and Wall St.? The solution was simply the provision of tariffs which would have balanced the playing field, maintained our power and fiscal stability, and provided incentives to locate here, and government income from those wishing to sell to the USA. The international corporations despise sovereign power and nationalism, and they've successfully worked to eliminate it in America.
You are correct but the problem was that China depegged it ONLY 5% because we were putting pressure on them and they wanted to stave off any trade threats coming from the US. Currencies around the world float freely in the marketplace against one another and the dollar China’s does not. China controls their currency to maintain their trade advantage.
Free people don't get "screwed" unless they choose to be, by anyone, be they corporate, partnership, or sole proprietor.
The fact that we educate so many students from “enemy” countries is odd as well. Why we would ever allow Red Chinese students into our country, then whine when our technology is pirated, makes no sense; in fact, it lends credence to the growing number of Americans that suspect they’ve been had.
Why? If machines can do the job better, should the law require that people do it instead?
“How much debt do these companies have?”
Thats the beauty of the Obama system...it doesn’t matter a whit! Thats what taxpayers are for! As long as the DNC et all get their cut, debt is just a number to be used as needed.
Absolutely not; I disagree with the way auto unions fought automation, and understand the natural outcome of that. The contractor angle, on the other hand, allows companies to basically skirt a lot of labor law. Unions became obsolete when many of the reforms they fought for became codified as law; full-time employees became obsolete when companies figured out how to avoid hiring them while accomplishing the same end.
While it may be legal, it would certainly explain the decline in our standard of living as well as the election of the communist agitator in the White House. Pooh-poohing the voters that put him there will simply give him another term; it is time the Republicans listened to our former middle class and addressed their concerns.
Thanks to the QE2 and Federal Reserve and Treasury officials in cahoots with Wall St, the return on your "savings" might just cover the fees the banks charge you. They really want to force you through artificially low interest rates to invest in the casino of a stock market (much of it foreign) instead of buying American debt that should pay reasonable interest rates.
US sovereignty is going out of vogue, and non-conservative corporatists owned by multi-national media and corporations are the reason. The day of reckoning is coming.
Did you notice this one???
....And thanks to porous tax laws, these companies return fewer of those profits to American shores than in the past....
Nice phrasing. More like ‘thanks to high corporate income tax, companies must avoid bringing profits to American shores.’
I ran a construction company for over 40 years and there is no way I would ever hire someone to give them a job!!!
If someone wanted a building to do business in I either made a profit or that business could go operate under a bush somewhere as far as i’m concerned!
—SIGH— In an ideal world, that is true, AFTER you’ve been screwed enough to learn your lesson. Both sides need to abide by rules for the partnership to work-It isn’t a one way street.
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