Hormel (HRL) lowers estimates for profitability this year, dropping its EPS outlook to $1.88-$1.96 from prior guidance of $1.93-$2.03. The company cites higher input costs and poor pork sales for the shortfall. HRL -9% premarket, working off much of the gains picked up from enthusiasm in the sector after Smithfields Foods was bought out. [View news story]
This is one of those bubble divvy stocks. $28 soon.
Stocks look to open the week with big gains, S&P 500 (SPY) futures +0.9% and Nasdaq 100 (QQQ) futures +1%. The Nikkei gained 2.7% overnight and Europe is sharply higher as well, the Stoxx 50 +1.6%. [View news story]
don't sell what you hold, and buy the deals when they pop up. then you won't care about the volatility and what the crooks on Wall street are up to.
Deflation - Would It Really Be All That Bad? [View article]
David in LA. Thanks for the econ lesson. I remember that stuff from Econ 101. I think I was also taught in that same course that a little bit of inflation was good for everybody. Fortunately, at the same time I took a Social studies course with a prof that promoted critical thinking. Something which is apparently not in vogue these days.
But, your last paragraph is patently incorrect. True economic growth is to be defined as increasing volume of output, not notional, inflated growth measured in dollars, yen, Euros or any other fiat currency subjected to degradation by the central banks.
As long as there's population growth, innovation, investment, savings and efficient utilization of resources, there will be true economic growth. Creeping deflation promotes this condition much better than Creeping Inflation.
Inflation is not necessary to promote growth. That notion is simply Keynesian pablum perpetuated by the political class to justify their endless deficit spending.
Deflation - Would It Really Be All That Bad? [View article]
Michael Nau - Go back and study your economic history.
We experienced benign deflation when we were on the gold standard. As productivity and resource utilization gains were made, the general price level declined slightly on a YOY basis, as the gains were passed on to the end user.
Inflation is the lazy man's way of running the economy. It is a hidden tax that eats away from every working man's livelihood and it discourages savings and investment, as well demonstrated in our very own situation since the advent of the Fed running things. Inflation creates an urgency to run out and buy things now, at the expense of future economic activity, but, without further increasing inflation, that occurrence is a one time burst that eventually passes from the system after having stolen from the future.
I'm not advocating return to the gold standard, but the Fed could just as easily engineer stable prices or slightly benign deflation as it engineers inflation of varying levels. The reason it does not is because the politicians like to over spend their budgets, and listed company managements are more than happy to go along because it makes them look good as they collect their fat paychecks while taking a free ride from the Fed.
These inflationistas then make up stories about how good inflation is for the overall economy to justify their laziness and sloppy management styles.
To Robert Wagner - Take off your green eyeshades. Anyone can put together a proforma under a scenario of deflation. But it doesn't stop there, the next step for a financial manager is to go out and light a fire under his fellow management in manufacturing, engineering, marketing and sales to find the savings and efficiency improvements to stay competitive. To just sit around and whine about declining sales prices is typical of sloppy financial and general business management (outside the tech industry) that is so prevalent in the "modern" advanced economies.
Deflation - Would It Really Be All That Bad? [View article]
So you're saying that inflation is good because it allows a business to charge higher and higher prices without having to give it's employees a raise?
Inflation is the crutch of weak management. It causes distortions in the financial reporting that makes such management appear to be producing profits when in reality all they're doing is arbitraging differentials in price escalation amongst labor, materials and selling prices.
Deflation in the range of 2% a year would hold management's feet to the fire to actually do their jobs and find ways to improve labor productivity as well as materials and overhead utilization, to offset the continuously lower selling prices.
General Motors (GM) plans to cut the price of its electric Chevy Volt by $4K in order to boost sales and match promotional activity from Nissan and Toyota. After factoring in tax incentives, a 2013 Volt can be snapped up for as low as $28,500 or leased for three years at $269 per month with a $2,399 down payment. What to watch: GM is sitting on plenty of Volt inventory it needs to clear to make way for new EV models. Will pricing hit a break point to spur sales? [View news story]
Did they have that much margin in the product, or is it now a "loss leader"?
Echelon Refines The Smart Meter As Grid Sensor [View article]
Same thing happened with our rural co-op. I suspect the meter they put in doesn't even have the capability for time of day metering. It's main purpose appears to be to eliminate the need for a meter reader, while charging the customers for the cost of the new meter and it's installation.
Facing $31M in interest payments in August and the maturity of almost $52M in convertible debt a month later, Exide Technologies (XIDE) has filed for bankruptcy protection with liabilities of $1.14B and assets of over $1.89B. It's the lead-acid battery company's second filing in 11 years. Exide cited rising costs, Europe's slowdown and intense competition as reasons for its current problems. Exide has obtained a $500M bankruptcy loan from JPMorgan (JPM). (PR) [View news story]
Management should have known better than put a plant like that in Cali in the first place.
How To Protect Your Cash In Times Of Crisis [View article]
The first paragraph overstates the hit taken by Cyprus bank customers. The first 100k euros were totally protected. It was the amount above 100k that was subjected to bail-in.
Isn't "offshoring" what most big Cyprus bank depositors were engaged in, in the first place? Didn't work out very well for them, did it?
Spreading your money around through various types of assets as well as diversifying among political boundaries is a good idea. But, as the holders of secret Swiss accounts have discovered, it's not easy nor foolproof.
It's looking like the June policy meeting when the Fed will officially signal it's set to begin tapering asset purchases, according to Jon Hilsenrath. Yesterday's lukewarm jobs reports removed pressure to act right away, but the prerequisite necessary to cut back QE - an improving economy - has been met. [View news story]
My thoughts exactly. Either they think the momentum is there to get to those numbers, or they have decided QE does more harm than good. I suspect the latter.
It's looking like the June policy meeting when the Fed will officially signal it's set to begin tapering asset purchases, according to Jon Hilsenrath. Yesterday's lukewarm jobs reports removed pressure to act right away, but the prerequisite necessary to cut back QE - an improving economy - has been met. [View news story]
It is only because the Fed has facilitated their irresponsible behaviours. Had the Fed stepped back and forced Congress and the administration to deal with this matter it would have been taken care of a long time ago.
Politicians are more than happy to let somebody else do the heavy lifting. If the policy fails, then the politicians have someone to scapegoat and point fingers at. They will only do what they have to do when you hold their feet to the fire.
Bernanke, an unelected bureaucrat, has stupidly been stepping into the breach and letting the politicians off the hook with his QE for far too long.
"We should all hope for a normalization of interest rates," says Jamie Dimon (JPM), speaking in China. "As we go back to normal, it's going to be scary, and it's going to be volatile ... I am going to look at every word the Fed says." [View news story]
The new, new normal: Good news is bad news and bad news is bad news.
Recently, the market learned that youth unemployment in Italy hit 40% in April to go along with a 36-year record high of 12% overall unemployment. Never fear though, Italy's trade union CGIL is out with its estimate of when the Italian economy will recover pre-crisis (un)employment levels: 2076, a mere 63 years from now. (original article) [View news story]
Clearly as automation takes over more and more productive jobs, the demand for output has to come from somewhere. Otherwise we'll have a bunch of machines making things that nobody can afford to buy, and that won't last long. We may be at a historical turning point.
Alex G is onto something. The service people will have to be paid very well in order to keep production running. There's certainly nothing wrong with a 20 hour workweek if productivity advances so much that one can make as much in 20 hours as we did in 40. Also, shortened careers. Both these trends have already happened if you compare today with say 100 years ago.
Would it be possible for a person to select a working career life of say 10 years and then leisure or self actualization after that? So far, our answer to significant advances in productivity via automation have been to create "make work" so that we keep people from being couch potatoes all day long. Some examples of "make work": the war on drugs, war on terrorism, schools & human teachers vs the internet, welfare to work, Dept. of Homeland Security and most of the governmental agencies expansion that has occurred over the past 50 years.
We ignore and resist the trend toward mechanization and improved productivity by creating this pretend work to keep people busy. But we can only resist for so long and then it will be forced upon us with no preparation. It would be better to prepare, I think. Preparation in the form of well thought out policy and education to help people deal with these trends.
Hormel (HRL) lowers estimates for profitability this year, dropping its EPS outlook to $1.88-$1.96 from prior guidance of $1.93-$2.03. The company cites higher input costs and poor pork sales for the shortfall. HRL -9% premarket, working off much of the gains picked up from enthusiasm in the sector after Smithfields Foods was bought out. [View news story]
Stocks look to open the week with big gains, S&P 500 (SPY) futures +0.9% and Nasdaq 100 (QQQ) futures +1%. The Nikkei gained 2.7% overnight and Europe is sharply higher as well, the Stoxx 50 +1.6%. [View news story]
Deflation - Would It Really Be All That Bad? [View article]
But, your last paragraph is patently incorrect. True economic growth is to be defined as increasing volume of output, not notional, inflated growth measured in dollars, yen, Euros or any other fiat currency subjected to degradation by the central banks.
As long as there's population growth, innovation, investment, savings and efficient utilization of resources, there will be true economic growth. Creeping deflation promotes this condition much better than Creeping Inflation.
Inflation is not necessary to promote growth. That notion is simply Keynesian pablum perpetuated by the political class to justify their endless deficit spending.
Deflation - Would It Really Be All That Bad? [View article]
We experienced benign deflation when we were on the gold standard. As productivity and resource utilization gains were made, the general price level declined slightly on a YOY basis, as the gains were passed on to the end user.
Inflation is the lazy man's way of running the economy. It is a hidden tax that eats away from every working man's livelihood and it discourages savings and investment, as well demonstrated in our very own situation since the advent of the Fed running things. Inflation creates an urgency to run out and buy things now, at the expense of future economic activity, but, without further increasing inflation, that occurrence is a one time burst that eventually passes from the system after having stolen from the future.
I'm not advocating return to the gold standard, but the Fed could just as easily engineer stable prices or slightly benign deflation as it engineers inflation of varying levels. The reason it does not is because the politicians like to over spend their budgets, and listed company managements are more than happy to go along because it makes them look good as they collect their fat paychecks while taking a free ride from the Fed.
These inflationistas then make up stories about how good inflation is for the overall economy to justify their laziness and sloppy management styles.
To Robert Wagner - Take off your green eyeshades. Anyone can put together a proforma under a scenario of deflation. But it doesn't stop there, the next step for a financial manager is to go out and light a fire under his fellow management in manufacturing, engineering, marketing and sales to find the savings and efficiency improvements to stay competitive. To just sit around and whine about declining sales prices is typical of sloppy financial and general business management (outside the tech industry) that is so prevalent in the "modern" advanced economies.
Deflation - Would It Really Be All That Bad? [View article]
Inflation is the crutch of weak management. It causes distortions in the financial reporting that makes such management appear to be producing profits when in reality all they're doing is arbitraging differentials in price escalation amongst labor, materials and selling prices.
Deflation in the range of 2% a year would hold management's feet to the fire to actually do their jobs and find ways to improve labor productivity as well as materials and overhead utilization, to offset the continuously lower selling prices.
General Motors (GM) plans to cut the price of its electric Chevy Volt by $4K in order to boost sales and match promotional activity from Nissan and Toyota. After factoring in tax incentives, a 2013 Volt can be snapped up for as low as $28,500 or leased for three years at $269 per month with a $2,399 down payment. What to watch: GM is sitting on plenty of Volt inventory it needs to clear to make way for new EV models. Will pricing hit a break point to spur sales? [View news story]
Echelon Refines The Smart Meter As Grid Sensor [View article]
Facing $31M in interest payments in August and the maturity of almost $52M in convertible debt a month later, Exide Technologies (XIDE) has filed for bankruptcy protection with liabilities of $1.14B and assets of over $1.89B. It's the lead-acid battery company's second filing in 11 years. Exide cited rising costs, Europe's slowdown and intense competition as reasons for its current problems. Exide has obtained a $500M bankruptcy loan from JPMorgan (JPM). (PR) [View news story]
How To Protect Your Cash In Times Of Crisis [View article]
Isn't "offshoring" what most big Cyprus bank depositors were engaged in, in the first place? Didn't work out very well for them, did it?
Spreading your money around through various types of assets as well as diversifying among political boundaries is a good idea. But, as the holders of secret Swiss accounts have discovered, it's not easy nor foolproof.
It's looking like the June policy meeting when the Fed will officially signal it's set to begin tapering asset purchases, according to Jon Hilsenrath. Yesterday's lukewarm jobs reports removed pressure to act right away, but the prerequisite necessary to cut back QE - an improving economy - has been met. [View news story]
It's looking like the June policy meeting when the Fed will officially signal it's set to begin tapering asset purchases, according to Jon Hilsenrath. Yesterday's lukewarm jobs reports removed pressure to act right away, but the prerequisite necessary to cut back QE - an improving economy - has been met. [View news story]
Politicians are more than happy to let somebody else do the heavy lifting. If the policy fails, then the politicians have someone to scapegoat and point fingers at. They will only do what they have to do when you hold their feet to the fire.
Bernanke, an unelected bureaucrat, has stupidly been stepping into the breach and letting the politicians off the hook with his QE for far too long.
"We should all hope for a normalization of interest rates," says Jamie Dimon (JPM), speaking in China. "As we go back to normal, it's going to be scary, and it's going to be volatile ... I am going to look at every word the Fed says." [View news story]
Good news is bad news and bad news is bad news.
Fairway Group (FWM): FQ4 EPS of -$1.17 misses by $1.11. Revenue of $178.7M misses by $4.4M. (PR) [View news story]
Kudos to the player who bought the puts yesterday.
Deflation Isn't An Export, Crazy Talk Is [View article]
Recently, the market learned that youth unemployment in Italy hit 40% in April to go along with a 36-year record high of 12% overall unemployment. Never fear though, Italy's trade union CGIL is out with its estimate of when the Italian economy will recover pre-crisis (un)employment levels: 2076, a mere 63 years from now. (original article) [View news story]
Alex G is onto something. The service people will have to be paid very well in order to keep production running. There's certainly nothing wrong with a 20 hour workweek if productivity advances so much that one can make as much in 20 hours as we did in 40. Also, shortened careers. Both these trends have already happened if you compare today with say 100 years ago.
Would it be possible for a person to select a working career life of say 10 years and then leisure or self actualization after that? So far, our answer to significant advances in productivity via automation have been to create "make work" so that we keep people from being couch potatoes all day long. Some examples of "make work": the war on drugs, war on terrorism, schools & human teachers vs the internet, welfare to work, Dept. of Homeland Security and most of the governmental agencies expansion that has occurred over the past 50 years.
We ignore and resist the trend toward mechanization and improved productivity by creating this pretend work to keep people busy. But we can only resist for so long and then it will be forced upon us with no preparation. It would be better to prepare, I think. Preparation in the form of well thought out policy and education to help people deal with these trends.