Posted on 07/21/2012 10:06:58 AM PDT by Son House
For the second quarter of 2012, 94 companies within the S&P 500 have provided downside earnings preannouncements, while only 26 companies have provided upside surprises. (Source: The Wall Street Journal, July 2, 2012.)Republicans need to emphasize these results after 4 years of the Democrat's Economic plan now. If Democrats have any control including more than 40 seats in the Senate, we can expect these same Democrats will inhibit any legislation that would improve the private sector.
According to Thomson Reuters, which tracks the number of upside to downside surprises, this was the worst showing since 2001!
Thank Gawd we had the recovery summer of 2011 or it would REALLY be bad! /s
Republicans also need to be careful not to make the economy look artificially robust prior to the election. I'm buying emergency supplies, including food and lead, but otherwise on strike as a consumer until we get rid of the communist in our White House.
Obama needs a second term — after all, Rome wasn’t burned in a day.
I thought 2009 was “the summer of recovery”
There was another recent thread about 70s nostalgia which brought to mind the similarities between today’s ‘fashion’ and that of the decade that taste forgot.
It is a vicious circle as manufacturers and retailers attempt to sell the cheapest threadbare tat. Customers, who still seek quality and can tell the difference, leave the rubbish on the shelves and sales fall. Advertising and magazine articles (possibly redundant) attempt to convince the public that plastic and polyester are hip and happening but to no avail (except the gullible and tacky). More flea-market product is stocked and the public ignores it again...etc.
I shook my head in frustration and wonderment recently as I attempted to find a simple white dress shirt that would survive a year or two of launderings. Most, including those at so-called upscale retailers, you could read a newspaper through and the details (buttons, sewing) were shamefully poor.
Yes we are borrowing billions of dollars from China but their low-rent street-market clothing is nothing to emulate.
And the fact most all the Democrats have gone along with the whole ‘hope and change’ plan is more evidence of their collective poor mental ability for crucial analysis of the economy.
Yes, we may soon relate this time to the cycle in after Christmas sales, when what’s left gets sold at bargain prices because retail owners want to at least break even and not be left holding the inventory.
Yes, wise move. Also look at the ways you can provide services, as many stores and shops may go out of business in the near future.
As more people go Galt, the economy will only recover when a true free market capitalist Republic is restored. Cronyism and Marxism is destroying us from within. Why do any more than the minimum?
It is all the Obama effect. I also blame every Liberal, RINO, and Democrat.
I don't know if it will ever recover. But, it has to get worse before it will get better. True reform would involve cutting federal and state jobs, gutting federal spending.
The past decades of high consumer spending and abuse of credit shouldn't be the norm. It will be interesting what a real recovery will look like.
Why the three car dealers in my town with the 2/3 empty lots are just making room for all the zero gas, no electric, wind-powered magic cars that will be coming out of Detroit sometime soon before the election. The bankrupt tractor implement complex is just regrouping to get new product amassed so that the farmers here who grow apples, corn, etc. can plant anew for a better and brighter tomorrow (if they can figure out how to make water out of sewage). Unemployment? Hell, that ain't no problem. For those few who are signing up for unemployement, you've got a full 99 weeks, and even then when Obama is re-elected it will be extended indefinitely. Don't worry about those Chinese who buy their T-Bills direct from the US Treasury now instead of bidding at Fed Reserve auctions. They like the dollar. In fact, they like your home, your job, your car, and your servitude.......nope, no problem here.
That is damn funny!
Yep, similar thought here, if Democrats put any hold on real working economic legislation, Starve the Beast 2.0 will be implemented with vigor as the TEA Party, no emphasis on the leaders, but lots of participation.
The slow moving train wreck continues, picking up speed even.
There was a recovery in 2011?
Why has this information been concealed up to now?
That was a somewhat extended “dead cat bounce”, propped up by various injections of “quantitative easement” funds primarily to big players, and not down on the street.
This is not, and has not, been a recession for a while now. It is Great Depression II, extended and prolonged by the very measures that were supposed to “solve” the lack of liquidity and stagnant growth. The difference between this situation and Jimmy Carter’s stagflation, is that the artificial suppression of interest rates had temporarily deferred price rise, but that cushion is now disappeared, with prices rising inexortably in both food and, yes, energy. Coal is being priced out of competition, due to restrictions on emissions (just like Obama promised), and only the fact that natural gas has become comparatively VERY cheap, has the price of generating electricity not yet gone through the roof. This regime has done just about everything they can, through selective enforcement of regulatory authority, to prevent the recovery and wide distribution of the new sources of petroleum available through the fracking process.
This has reflected negatively on consumer demand for hard goods, even those imported from China (which, strangely enough, is also impacting the Chinese economy), and on any rebound in the real estate market.
And now we have misplaced emphasis on stimulus, helping the buggy whip factories stay open, at the expense of the public treasury, without trying to adapt the buggy whip manufacturing facilities to high-tech environments that employ intelligent decision-making management and economic allocation of scarce resources.
Applying the expertise of Bain Capital or other similar venture capitalists to firms like Solyndra, Evergreen Solar and SpectraWatt, to make them truly “mean and lean” as well as simply “green”, was a course of action apparently not even considered by the current regime.
China actually makes high quality clothing, too (unlike the USA, any more) - but the big retailers just aren’t buying it. If you see cheaply made garments on any major store’s display racks, it is because of a deliberate decision by the retailer to target the lower end of the market at lower price points.
I could get a degree in gender studies. My guess is that few with that skill would survive a breakdown in society, and no preppers at all are building up that "asset", so I'd be the world's expert!
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.