Businessweek reports best gains in 31 years!!
http://businessweek.com/magazine/con...8/b3871084.htm
The part I like in the article:
The part the Bush-haters will inevitably attempt to twist into a conspiracy theory:
The part I like in the article:
Quote:
The government stoked consumer spending by cutting taxes while the Fed maintained low interest rates. And that encouraged homeowners to keep refinancing, putting more dollars in their pockets. All that helps explain why corporate sales expanded by 9%. Only six of the 60 Scoreboard industry groups had lower sales during the year, compared with 19 in 2002.
The government stoked consumer spending by cutting taxes while the Fed maintained low interest rates. And that encouraged homeowners to keep refinancing, putting more dollars in their pockets. All that helps explain why corporate sales expanded by 9%. Only six of the 60 Scoreboard industry groups had lower sales during the year, compared with 19 in 2002.
The part the Bush-haters will inevitably attempt to twist into a conspiracy theory:
Quote:
No industry added more to Scoreboard profits in absolute terms than Big Oil. The group's earnings more than doubled, to $45.2 billion. The war in Iraq, low supplies, and continued uncertainty over the Middle East sent oil and gas prices higher over the year.
No industry added more to Scoreboard profits in absolute terms than Big Oil. The group's earnings more than doubled, to $45.2 billion. The war in Iraq, low supplies, and continued uncertainty over the Middle East sent oil and gas prices higher over the year.
Comments
See, econ indicators are no different really that SPECmarks, XBench, etc, etc, etc. If you know what they're looking for, you can skew them pretty easily.
Big Oil is one of the major components of that indicator, and a small change for them means a proportionally larger change for that indicator. So... if you want to make the economy look 'really good', work towards pushing the most significant data sources.
Pretty basic statistics and modeling fudging... and it's everywhere.
And here's a little something about the group in this article that made major gains.......http://money.cnn.com/2004/02/20/news.../oil/index.htm
I've been hearing for months now : " surging ", " dazzeling ", " Brite ", and " jobs will follow ". Have I seen much evidence of this in reality ( especially in light of the Bush adminstrations recent need to revise there jobs forcast downward )? Not really.
I know companies have to pad their profit claims in order to look good. Also news sites try to report good news with the economy in order to try to boost consumer confidence. However there are still a lot of unemployed people out there who are trying to make ends meet. They don't see things as quite so rosy. Our state of Oregon is still not doing well at all. The university I work at lost a lot of money in stocks back in 2000 and I'm told this next business year ( starting in June ) will be our last lean year but also our hardest. This is a private school that's usually immune to what's happening with the economy. I've worked there 15 years and I've never seen it like this.
So it's easy to read an article like this and some people will think " well we're out of the woods for sure now ". I'll believe it when I see more evidence across the board.