Stocking shelves? With what?
Note the empty pallets...
Posted on 08/19/2011 6:28:28 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Despite a politically and economically tumultuous start to the month of August, CEO confidence stayed steadily pessimistic. Although the index did rise – for the first time in months and by only 0.4 percent—it still remains at a low 5.30 out of a possible 10. The Index, Chief Executive’s monthly gauge of CEOs’ perceptions of overall business conditions, has seen a 17 percent drop from February’s 2011 high of 6.39. Now, only 45.3 percent of CEOs expect business conditions to be at least ‘good’ in the next year, up from July’s 41 percent.
Despite the debt ceiling drama and the S&P’s downgrade, the view of current conditions only dropped .01 from July to 4.64 out of 10.
One CEO attributes the steady, albeit tepid, numbers to individual company performances versus business conditions as a whole, “Individual companies may do well coming out of the recessions, but the cyclical economy will accelerate. This will be exacerbated by poor domestic policy in a world of countries hungry to compete.”
Expectations for the future remain wary and generally pessimistic. Fewer chief executives expect to see an increase in revenue over the next year as compared to July; only 59.11 percent expect a revenue increase versus July’s 60.6 percent. This is a 20 percent drop from April when 74 percent of CEOs expected to see increased revenues.
Just over half of CEOs do, however, expect to see an increase in profits, a slight improvement over last month. In July, 52 percent of chief executives expected a profit increase, whereas 53.13 expected a profit increase in August.
July’s better-than-expected unemployment numbers also seem to be echoed here. The unemployment rate moved down slightly to 9.1 percent and 34.43 percent of CEOs expected to increase hiring over the next year (although the 66 percent majority of CEOs don’t expect to increase hiring).
Following the debt ceiling circus, attitudes toward the government have remained sour. One CEO said, “As I approach my 44th year in business, the last 20 as CEO, I can never remember a time when I felt so disenfranchised from our leadership in Washington. They seem determined to continue their ongoing anti-business attitude and to frustrate small and mid-sized businesses by uncertainty on taxes, government regulations, and simply too many bureaucratic restrictions. We desperately need a change in Washington.”
CEO Confidence Index — August 2011
(CHARTS AT LINK)
It has to be really dead out there, I guess.
Darn it. Have I grammar-policed you before? Sorry.
Because of your post, I took the time to read further into the poorly written article, and what the anonymous author actually meant was : Despite a politically and economically tumultuous start to the month of August, CEO confidence stayed steadily OPTIMISTIC, - not pessimistic.
Stocking shelves? With what?
Note the empty pallets...
(Of course there are exceptional, quality CEOs as well.)
Think of all the jobs that were created or saved to carefully and artfully arrange all those empty pallets.
Without Obama that person might be unemployed now, just like the hundreds of workers who would be loading moving and unloading those pallets.
You got it! None of those federal agencies can hang their hat on an article of the Constitution authorizing their activity.
Eliminate them.
They may find some young citizens fighting for those jobs much as the young Irishmen once muscled their way into the American landscape...
“They may find some young citizens fighting for those jobs much as the young Irishmen once muscled their way into the American landscape...”
The Irish were lucky in arriving at a time when the US needed soldiers, miners and railroad laborers; the last relative of mine to come over had to serve a tour in Vietnam before being granted citizenship.
A key difference is that the Irish were legal.
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