Griz

With more than 2/3 of S&P 500 companies now in, Q1 earnings are about 10% higher than consensus - the best reading ever. Dr. Ed Yardeni notes that some managements have attributed the beats to aggressive cost-cutting, suggesting that if the economy is bottoming and recovers later this year, the profits rebound could be surprisingly robust.

"Cost cutting", doesn't that mean firing employees?

If everyone is unemployed, then won't there be a 2nd round of demand reduction, leading to more "cost cutting" feeding into yet another round of "cost reductions", leading to yet more...