Posted on 08/28/2011 12:28:28 PM PDT by barmag25
CALHOUN, Ga. — A full economic recovery could be years away since consumer confidence slipped following the country’s debt debate, the head of the nation’s biggest floorcovering company said Friday.
Jeff Lorberbaum, chairman and CEO of Mohawk Industries, called on political leaders to create confidence and “get out of the way” of job creation.
“We need government to create confidence through consistency,” he said at the Gordon County Chamber of Commerce’s first State of Industry event. “When you get uncomfortable, what do you do? You spend less.”
That decline in spending has hit manufacturers like Mohawk especially hard, as consumers worried about their jobs have chosen to hold off on expensive home upgrades like new floors and carpet.
Since homebuilding started to fall in 2006 and lenders restricted the availability of credit, flooring manufacturers have gone through “the largest decline in the history of the flooring industry,” he said. Carpet sales are down nearly 40 percent from the peak levels five years ago, Lorberbaum said.
“Government policies were put in place to help people own homes, and we thought it was a good policy,” he said. “We had people with almost no income who were able to buy houses. It was ridiculous.”
Then, “Lo and behold, you have to pay the piper sooner or later,” he said of the meltdown in the subprime mortgage market.
The flooring industry hit rock bottom in 2010, forcing plant closures and mass layoffs throughout Georgia’s carpet belt.
Flooring’s recovery has been further stymied by the rising price of petroleum, which is both the basic building block for creating carpet as well as a major cost of transporting flooring to customers.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesfreepress.com ...
What all of the educated talking head morons do not seem to realize is that the well being of economy is ALL about energy prices.
He is entirely correct. The one flaw in his argument is that Calhoun and Dalton and the flooring manufacturers ther have relied on illegals for well over a decade. That whole area looks like Tijuana.
I think this CEO should keep his mouth shut before he gets another call from the Obama regime...
The government boot is on the throat of the economy, energy as much as any other.
” consumer confidence slipped following the country’s debt debate”
That’s when a lot of people I know actually were alerted to the debt crisis. They all had a hard time grasping what just one trillion meant. So I told them that one trillion seconds equaled 32,000 years. Neil’s jaw almost hit the floor. He was too stunned to speak for several seconds,,, only to mutter;
“I had no idea!”
Mr. Lorberbaum is only partially correct when he says “We need government to create confidence through consistency.” We could have a fully “consistent” government that is 25 times larger than we need and it would still crush capitalism and snuff out individual liberty. He should have said we need to put fedzilla back in its cage by cutting off most of its legs, arms and tails.
Sorry, Mr. Lorberbaum, not tough enough.
The list, ping
Let me know if you would like to be on or off the ping list
bump.
A year and a half into a Palin presidency and this mess would be ancient history.
Indeed. I live in the area and it’s been absolutely taken over. Anglos need not apply, Spanish a requirement.
Wrong, demand, no demand no recovery, no demand no jobs, we have plenty of supply. And no, none of the old fixes from the past will work. A new product, a new form of energy, etc would work.
Thanks barmag25.
perhaps mohawk should heed the lesson from Gibson Guitar. Who’s to say flooring companies don’t also possess exotic wood yet illegal in other countries. US Fish and Wildlife could want a word.
There’s a cold wind blowing.
A new form of energy would be great. The old fix though, will work just fine. Fifty dollar oil will make everything significantly less expensive. Again that would be everything.Obama has been trying the new energy thing for three years now. Less expensive everything would be equivalent to a massive tax break.
>> perhaps mohawk should heed the lesson from Gibson Guitar.
Tyranny bump.
Remember all, all, modern day commercial energy is subsidized by the tax payer. And a technology breakthrough is not what Obummer has been doing.
“What all of the educated talking head morons do not seem to realize is that the well being of economy is ALL about energy prices.”
Bingo.
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