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 hope you understand that this is PRECISELY the argument of the anarchists who show up and riot at every meeting of big business and/or government financial agencies. Rush calls their participants “long-haired, dope-smoking, maggot-infested”.
Of course, your analysis of the collapse is 180 degrees from reality as would be expected.
The collapse was precipitated by the government forcing banks to loan money to people who could not pay it back. This eventually caused real estate to collapse bringing down the whole economy with it. It had NOTHING to do with international or world trade which would be required should your view be of reality rather than your backside.
Now Free Trade causes REAL ESTATE to collapse? BWAAHAHA, is there ANYTHING that bogey man can’t do?????
Applauding ignorance never reflects well on the hand clapper.
Perhaps you also need education as to what an insult is. I have been as gentle as a lamb in responding to these communist arguments.
You should read some real economic history and forget the Crank version. There have been very few periods in history wherein capitalism was as pure as you believe either morally or nationalistically. Government has almost always been intimately involved in economic events and business has always been seen as “greedy”. But Adam Smith showed that good intentions are irrelevant to the success of the economy. The only requirement is that a business legally provide a product for the lowest price possible. THAT is its job.
I am pleased to see that you believe free trade is good and dismiss the anti-free trade tirades of others here.
Our economic system now is not as free from regulation as one would wish but it is still the most productive in the world and IF the electorate becomes pro-business and rejects the socialist crap it is taught then there is a chance for it to return to glory. But that is apparently a long way off given the discussion on this thread.
Maybe at least reading the article would be nice.
It's a typical NTY Marxist/anti-business hit piece --only a Marxist would say it's bad when businesses make more profit with fewer employees. Increased productivity is a good thing. Furthermore the article came out last January --that ain't news it's history, and the update is that the latest quarterly changes show corp profits down 2%, corp. taxes up 7%, and employee comp. holding steady.
Spoken like the global citizen that you are.
The greatest liberating force in history is the idea of individual rights granted by the creator. After that, a policy of free enterprise so that individuals can pursue happiness and economic security. Mind you , FREE ENTERPRISE is NOT capitalism.
It is MARXIST to promote the idea that capitalism is a source of liberty, because if you studied Marx you would know that communism needs a dichotomy to exist. Capitalism and communism feed on each other as evidenced by the global capitalist investment in communist china, to promote the communist style government and use the communist dictatorship as a force to control the workers for them.
“free traders” need slave labor for their business model, they forced taxes on wages earned by individual workers to pay for the government that they corrupted, just so they don’t pay tariffs. It is the antithesis of what the founders wanted for this country. It is the antithesis of private property that wages become a bank for the government to plunder in the name of “free trade” anti tariff movement.
“free traders” have taken a backward communist dictatorship, in the name of China, and made it into an extremely militarily threatening state. Just take a peek at the latest columns by Bill Gertz in the Washington Times.
Our military is forced to give tours by communist military leaders of our most sensitive military facilities, all the while we know they use these visits to steal our technology to make war on us.
“free traders” did this.
“free traders” fomented the civil war in this country which ended in the deaths of more than 600,000 Americans.
They created the potato famine in Ireland, and they were the people that General Washington and our founders sought to overthrow in the American Revolution.
Free traitors, then, free traitors now.
And this meeting was held on Mars, the Moon or the space ship the aliens flew in on? And I am sure they feasted on aborted babies for lunch, too.
Is there any Crackpot theory you reject? Virtually every word in your last post is false and not just a little false but entirely and throughly false. Laughably, and hysterically funny false.
I finally figured out what “free trade” means to you. It is just a term which you apply to anything you don’t like or understand. It is infinitely expandable. It is too hot - well it is the damn free traders. My soup is too cold - well it is the damn free traders. My bus is late - well it is the damn free traders. I had a nightmare last night - well what do you expect, it is the damn free traders.
Monterrey Mexico. Is that on Mars?
The free traitor politicians always meet outside the US, so there is no ‘sunshine’ on their activities as required by US law for constitutional government.
You have bankrupted your intellect and resort to Alinski method for responding.
You’ve never heard of matricular consular cards? Again, must be a ‘global citizen’.
You’ve never heard of low income housing set asides?
You must be a ‘global citizen’.
You’ve never heard of the WTO? A ‘global citizen’ surely would know about that group and what they do.
You probably also never heard of Robert Zoellick, George Bush, Condoleeza Rice, Henry Paulson (plunge protection team mentioned earlier on this thread) and Susan Schwab and the Millenium challenge fake corporation with a US .gov address?
Oh yeah, they’re all from Mars....free traitors all.
My “bankrupted” intellect is sufficient to know that the Civil War had NOTHING to do with “free trade” as was claimed in your last batch of raving nonsense.
I was also unaware that Alinski invented laughing at stupidity and making fun of ignorance but what else can you expect from a free trader.
And “yes” Monterrey, Mexico as far as you are concerned is on Mars. Where do you think all those illegal aliens come from?
Of course, none of those issues have a thing to do with free trade other than the WTO. You seem to suffer under the delusion that free trade is government manipulated trade.
Oh you probably already know this,
that the Millenium challenge corporation was created to administer the Millenium challenge fund and was unveiled at the United Nations Conference on Financing for Development (FfD) in Monterrey, Mexico in 03/2002.
There are posts about this meeting on FR but you probably already know that.
United Nations + free traitors = Loot the US taxpayer and destroy the US economy while corrupting the US government.
And, to some extent, implementing both anticipatory and costs-experienced price hikes, or down-sizing packaging and quantity leaving the same traditional prices. However, this won’t work for long. Shoppers are figuring it out gradually.
Development is rarely the result of these international agencies precisely because free trade is not the result of their actions. If it were there would be much more growth in the third world which would benefit the US as well. Perhaps you haven’t noticed that poor nations don’t buy much stuff from us.
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.