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Gee, I wonder why all these companies are sitting on such mountains of cash instead of putting it to use through acquisition and capital improvements, ventures, etc....(all of which create growth and jobs).
MAYBE it has something to do with the regulation-centric, debt harboring culture of the current administration and Congress.
You'd think the idiots in the White House would realize if they'd just do something big about the debt, that the markets would go crazy and the economy would begin to turn around and that would be the quickest way to re-election.
Liberals are going to vote for Obama no matter what he does. Conservatives aren't going to vote for him no matter what he does. It's the moderates in the middle that are watching what happens with respect to the economy and will vote as such.
"A dumb man never learns. A smart man learns from his own failure and success. But a wise man learns from the failure and success of others."
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
Northern Trust’s Paul Kasriel lays into one of the more nonsensical shibboleths making the rounds these days — that U.S. businesses’ seem to have discovered “Selective Uncertainty:”
“I keep hearing that what is holding U.S. businesses back from expanding and hiring is “uncertainty.” Exactly what new types of uncertainty businesses face in the current environment vs. past environments is rarely spelled out. But if, in fact, businesses are paralyzed due to uncertainty, I would not expect them to be stepping up their purchases of capital equipment. After all, capital equipment has a relatively long life. If businesses were unusually uncertain about the long-term outlook, they would be more reluctant to make longer-term commitments, which the purchase of capital equipment is. Rather, if businesses were unusually uncertain about the future, they might be more inclined to hire workers, who, after all, can be dismissed on short notice if conditions were to change suddenly.
But just the opposite seems to be happening. Business hiring remains weak and business capital spending is robust. The capital spending part is illustrated in the chart below showing the 8-quarter annualized growth in shipments of nondefense capital goods deflated by the PPI for capital goods. In the 8 quarters of the current economic recovery/expansion, price-adjusted shipments of nondefense capital goods have increased at an annualized rate of 7.4%. In the prior economic expansion, when, presumably, there was normal or less-than-normal uncertainty, the fastest 8-quarter annualized growth in price-adjusted shipments of nondefense capital goods was 8.6% — in the 8 quarters ended Q1:2006. I would think that if abnormally-high business uncertainty prevailed today, there would have been considerably slower growth in price-adjusted purchases of nondefense capital goods than what has occurred.”
A) If you have 10 men and only one shovel, guess what, you still only end up with one guy on the end of the shovel.
B) Even if you COULD increase production and expand, exclusively on hiring there's a couple of reasons that doesn't work in uncertain periods either.
Think about it, firstly, it IS a costly venture to hire people. You have to train and educate them, there's investments made in new hires. You also take on their burden and if you cannot justify the increase in labor costs with new higher revenues...(which very few think they can while the economy is vascillating) then hiring doesn't make any sense.
If you were any type of business owner or vendor, would YOU hire right now and take on more employees? No.
B) What type of new uncertainty? Is he just dumb? Uncertainty as to how the market will fair. Uncertainty as to consumer confidence. Uncertainty as to the strength of the USD and the impacts it poses on materials purchases. For financial institutions, there's still a great deal of uncertainty as to the regulatory requirements...which Geithner has said he's all too comfortable dragging his feet so he can "get it right."
C) There's huge uncertainty internationally, all that's ocurring in Europe, etc. People see what's going on in Greece and Ireland and Spain and Portugal and they draw a straight line RIGHT to our own problems (and rightfully so). If we don't get a grip on our debt, in less than a decade we'll be right where Greece was at, with people rioting in the streets because they've discovered that they won't receive their unemployment or SS checks.
D) Like anything, it's relative. Why would you invest domestically, if emerging markets are higher reward/risk ratio? If we cannot build confidence here at home, that we have our things in order, companies will continue doing what they're doing, which is expanding OVERSEAS.
E) The other reason people are reluctant to hire is things like tax uncertainty, and burden uncertainty. The jury is still out on how much it's going to cost employers (or pass along reductions to employees) on Obamacare.
Did you see when the market began to rally? It was nearly immediately after the House was retaken by Republicans (providing some certainty that at least we wouldn't see any more terrible legislation jammed down everyone's throat...aka Obamacare) and then the tax policy was extended, (once again, providing a little certainty as to their tax burdens...which allows them to make smarter, more confident decisions about profit projections and hiring/expansion going forward).
Lastly, "The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself." The market right now is SERIOUSLY lacking some confidence and the Administration and the Congress could make all of this go away, simply by tackling the debt, giving tax certainty and at the very least, trying to work with private businesses on the regulatory uncertainty.
Banks are restrictive and reluctant to lend (besides, they can make way more issuing that capital in credit card debt).
If Obama would just remove his head from his ass....he'd realize, again....Liberals HAVE to vote for him. They don't have a choice...who are they gonna vote for? Romney? Bachman? The ONLY candidate that could potentially pose a threat to Obama (if he pisses off his base) would be someone like Ron Paul. Even then.
The quickest way to get re-elected is to hurry up, piss off some lazy liberal ****tards and stop spending so much money on free healthcare and free retirements....shore up the debt, reinstill confidence and get the economy and jobs going again.
I don't care what you're politics are...when people are employed and making money...it makes everything else less important. "It's the economy stupid."
"A dumb man never learns. A smart man learns from his own failure and success. But a wise man learns from the failure and success of others."