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Barron’s Backs Me Up!
- 200 DMA
- Ben Bernanke
- Ben Bernanke
- Case-Shiller
- Census Bureau
- Cleveland Fed
- Commercial Real Estate
- Consumer Sentiment
- Core CPI
- CPI
- Dennis Lockhart
- Displaced Moving Average
- Elizabeth Warren
- Global Economy
- Gross Domestic Product
- Japan
- Michigan
- New Home Sales
- Real estate
- Reality
- Recession
- recovery
- Richmond Fed
- Simon Johnson
- Unemployment
- Unemployment Claims
- University Of Michigan
Barron’s Backs Me Up!
That’s the cover of this weekend’s Barron’s. Unfortunately for Barron’s readers, they are 4 days behind my call to buy EWJ as well as my bullish call on the overall market on Tuesday in Member chat, which I reiterated in my BNN interview that evening. We went bargain shopping on Wednesday and picked up the EWJ June $10 calls at .58 and they already powered up to .85 (up 46%) so we took that and ran into the weekend – just in case something blows up(we can always get back in with a hedged position but 46% in 2 days is plenty to start!). We had more bullish trade ideas this week than in any week since early December, when we first broke though 1,225 on the S&P.
Unfortunately, despite the pullback, there are no re-entires on our Secret Santa’s Inflation Hedges from late December as they are all in the money and well ahead of the entries. We do have re-loads on our Breakout Defense Part Deux Trades and those can substitute for inflation fighters going forward but we are above the original Breakout Defense Portfolio – which we closed quite some time ago. Once things in Japan do settle down, we’ll be ready with a new, bullish portfolio but, at the moment – I’ll just be thrilled to see us take back our Major Breakout levels and hold them next week.
Now that we feel better about our Breakout 2 levels holding, it will be a lot easier for us to make long-term commitments where we were hesitant before. Of course there is still plenty to worry about but, if DefCon 3 can’t take down the markets – who are we to fret about a little inflation?
Speaking of inflation – let’s consider this chart (from Doug Short) and what complete and utter bullshit the CPI is! Very simply, without looking at anything else – it’s housing. Housing is 42% of the CPI and declining housing costs have masked rising inflation for 5 years now.
Does a lower price of a new home lower your mortgage payment? Does it lower your monthly rent? Of course not. Not only that but, as many of us have noticed – property taxes are skyrocketing as local governments struggle to offset decreasing income and sales tax revenues and that is not a factor in the CPI either!
Between that and the asinine fact that the Fed excludes food and energy from their calculations of "core" CPI and this index becomes a joke of a joke – but that’s the perfect tool for determining our very ridiculous fiscal policies, isn’t it? That’s all I’m going to say about it though – I’m trying to see how far I can get in this post without getting all pissed about politics. Unfortunately – the more I read – the angrier I get. I’m kind of like The Hulk that way…
Keep in mind that inflation is pretty much our entire bullish premise as the Global Economy is not really in such good shape but prices do keep rising and that makes Corporate Revenues rise (even if they sell the same number of units) and that makes earnings rise as well – IF they manage to control their input costs. Since Real Estate is still in the dumps, that key cost component is well under control for those businesses still solvent enough to pay their rents. Labor costs, if anything, continue to plunge so – as long as we avoid businesses that are susceptible to commodity input costs – we should do fine. Here’s a great chart from ShadowStats giving us a pretty clear picture of just how much out Government is lying to us about inflation:
Again, I say this without anger – I am trying very hard to just point out some of the factors that cause us to think that perhaps it is already too late to be an inflation denier in this economy. We’re looking at 8% annual inflation and that is BEFORE all the stimulative policies that have dumped $5Tn of new money onto the US economy and $10Tn onto the Global Economy. The initial swelling of trickle down money goes to the banks to the investing class and then (I do hope this is obvious) into investments like TBills, stocks and commodities and that’s how we buy a market rally but stage 2 is much, much more dangerous as the market rally tops out and the top 10% begin to cash out their ill-gotten gains (see Brad DeLong’s lecture on inflation).
Once the people who benefited from stock and commodity inflation begin to cash out and buy things – they then begin to send a wave of price inflation, also from the top down, that can hit the lower classes like a tsunami that cannot be stopped. The bottom 90% can’t afford to buy homes with a median price of $158,000 at the moment (yes, that’s all it is!).
imagine what happens when financial advisors like Goldman begin telling their people to "diversify" back into housing and the top 1% begin to buy 5, 10, 20, 40 homes as investments – driving up the prices for the bottom 99% as they begin flipping homes with each other again. Even worse, this activity quickly leads to an increase in mortgage rates, as the pool of available capital is sucked up by people with the best credit.
Abrupt transition: OK, it’s the next day and I’m now bored with inflation and moving on. I wanted to just remind everyone it’s still out there and mission accomplished, I hope. Now let’s see where today’s news flow take us…
Qaddafi says "everyone gets a gun" so they can defend Libya from the UN. There’s a plan that’s likely to backfire! US and British forces have begun bombing to cripple Qaddafi’s air capability and now he claims he is fighting Al-Qaida while, at the same time saying: "This is a colonialist and crusading aggression." I’m confused already! ZZ made a good point that this is a nice little stimulus program for our defense boys as we lay down 110 $750,000 Tomahawk Missiles on day one so ka-ching for General Dynamics on the reload.
In the other mess we’re watching, power is coming back to Fukushima and here’s a nice update site from Business Insider. As usual, if I have to only read on paper in life, it has to be the NYTimes, who have an excellent reactor by reactor status report. I was out in NY yesterday and it’s amazing how many people are perfectly happy with giving the NYTimes $15 a month for the on-line version. At this point, I think a lot of readers are starting to see the Times as something that needs to be supported – as the list of real news alternatives shrinks every month. Bottom line on the reactors – #4 seems to have a serious leak in the spent fuel pool – they can keep filling it but then they are contaminating the ground.
Already they are finding radioactivity in food as far as 90 miles from the plant. Yukio Edano, the chief cabinet secretary, said that spinach and milk were the only products found to have abnormally high radiation levels. The level of radioactivity found in the spinach would, if consumed for a year, equal the radiation received in a single CAT scan, he said, while that detected in milk would amount to just a fraction of a CAT scan. “These levels do not pose an immediate threat to your health,” Mr. Edano said. “Please stay calm.”
Food safety inspectors said the iodine 131 in the tested milk was up to five times the level the government deems safe, and the spinach had levels more than seven times the safe level. The spinach also contained slightly higher than allowable amounts of cesium 137. Minuscule amounts of radioactive iodine were also detected in the water supply in Tokyo and its five surrounding prefectures. Iodine 131 can be dangerous to human health, especially if absorbed through milk and milk products, because it can accumulate in the thyroid and cause cancer. Cesium 137 can damage cells and lead to an increased risk of cancer.
As an investable premise – we’re back to KO again as they bottle water (Dasani, Glaceau) and have the brand trust to be a go-to alternative in a relatively wealthy country like Japan. They took a nice dip below the 50 dma but the 200 dma is rising fast and, of course, it’s Coke – so we like them long-term anyway with the 2.9% dividend. You can buy KO for $62.70 and sell the 2013 $60 puts and calls for $14 for net $48.70/54.35, which is pretty good. You can also be more aggressive and buy the 2013 $55 calls for $10 and sell the $55 puts for $4.50 and the May $62.50 calls for $2, which is net $3.50 on the $7.50 spread. Obviously, the plan is to roll the caller a bit higher each quarter but even if KO gets away to the upside, it’s still a nice ROI with just $9 of cash and margin used on the trade and your worst case is owning KO at net $58.50.
Meanwhile, my kids had a sleepover to celebrate the lunar perigee and they all were playing a cool app on their IPhones and IPods which locates werewolves in the vicinity. I had no idea there were so many in our neighborhood but it does explain some of my neighbors… The kids are still too young to watch American Werewolf in London, unfortunately – a totally great film. Other than a drastic increase in lupine activity, the close passage of the moon seems to gone without incident but now we had the 2004 Indonesia earthquake and the Japan one so you can bet that, the next time the moon is closing in on us, people will be very nervous.
Speaking of nervous – Good debate on whether or not economics is a Discipline (or just BS):
The current crisis is not a demand crisis, it is a trust crisis. Bad corporate governance coupled with bad government policies has destroyed the financial sector, scaring investors and freezing lending. It is as if a nuclear bomb had destroyed all roads in America and we claimed that to alleviate the economic impact of such an event we should invest in banks. It is possible that eventually the effect will trickle down. But if the problem is the roads, you want to rebuild roads, not subsidise the financial sector. And if the problem is the financial sector, you want to fix this and not build roads…
This is a good chart that gives us a pretty good idea of what’s really wrong with the economy:
Econobrowser has a nice review of price dynamicsto remind us what is happening to small business owners as their customers are being driven to poverty. Interestingly, they don’t see competition from Large Business as a problem but it’s the large businesses that are taking the money from their customers by ratcheting up the cost of necessities – leaving them with little or no disposable income to spend with local businesses.
Along the same lines, there’s a paper out titled: "The Sad but True Story of Wages in America" which finds:
- U.S. productivity grew by 62.5% from 1989 to 2010, far more than real hourly wages for both private-sector and state/local government workers, which grew 12% in the same period. Real hourly compensation grew a bit more (20.5% for state/local workers and 17.9% for private-sector workers) but still lagged far behind productivity growth.
- Wage stagnation has hit high school–educated workers harder than college graduates, although both groups have suffered—and a bit more so in the public sector. For example, from 1989 to 2010, real wages for high school-educated workers in the private sector grew by just 4.8%, compared with 2.6% in state government. During the same period, real wages for college graduates in the private sector grew 19.4%, compared with 9.5% in state government.
- The typical worker has had stagnating wages for a long time, despite enjoying some wage growth during the economic recovery of the late 1990s. While productivity grew 80% between 1979 and 2009, the hourly wage of the median worker grew by only 10.1%, with all of this wage growth occurring from 1996 to 2002, reflecting the strong economic recovery of the late 1990s.
- The fading momentum of the 1990s recovery failed to propel real wage gains for college graduates employed by private-sector firms or states from 2002 to 2010, despite productivity growth of 20.2% over the same period.
These data underscore that there is a bigger story than public versus private compensation and a more penetrating set of questions to ask than who has more than whom. The ability of the economy to produce more goods and services has not translated into greater compensation for either group of workers. Why has pay fared so poorly overall? Why did the richest 1% of Americans receive 56% of all the income growth between 1989 and 2007, before the recession began(compared with 16% going to the bottom 90% of households)? Why are corporate profits 22% above their pre-recession level while total corporate sector employees’ compensation (reflecting lower employment and meager pay increases) is 3% below pre-recession levels? The answers lie in an economy that is designed to work for the well off and not to produce good jobs and improved living standards.
Essentially, economic policy has not supported good jobs over the last 30 years or so. Rather, the focus has been on policies that were thought to make consumers better off through lower prices: deregulation of industries, privatization of public services, the weakening of labor standards including the minimum wage, erosion of the social safety net, expanding globalization, and the move toward fewer and weaker unions. These policies have served to erode the bargaining power of most workers, widen wage inequality, and deplete access to good jobs. In the last 10 years even workers with a college degree have failed to see any real wage growth.
Speaking of people getting screwed over by big business:. All roads, of course lead to Goldman and Zach Carter finds GS alumni Mary Kissel is behind the WSJ’s campaign to smear Elizabeth Warren. Simon Johnson also follows up on this and, if nothing else, it’s a good read on how intwined all this stuff is. As Dealbreaker notes, the "Banking Industry Should Feel Free to Slash, Hip Check General Population into Boards Again."
Liz does need to stop bothering rich people. According to a Fidelity investments survey of more than 1,000 millionaires (households with at least $1 million in investible assets, excluding retirement accounts and real estate), 42% of respondents say they don’t feel wealthy. Keep in mind that while $1 million is the threshold, this group has an average net worth of $3.5 million! Those who don’t feel wealthy were asked how much money they would need to feel wealthy. Their answer: $7.5 million. (That’s the median asset level). But here’s the interesting twist. The 58% of millionaires who did feel wealthy were also asked how much money they had when the began to feel “wealthy.” Their answer: $1.75 million.
On the other end of the economic spectrum, here’s a good run-down in Daily Finance about how screwed up the foreclosure process still is and how difficult it will still be to resolve. Yves Smith sums it up very nicely saying: "The response by the authorities bears disturbing parallels to the Fukushima facility disaster response: a preoccupation with protecting “assets”, meaning the miscreant banks, while putting a much larger community at risk. The stakes were so high and the initial response so visibly insufficient that the prime minister intervened and ordered more aggressive measures be taken. But here, the federal government has cast its lot in with banks and is seeking to muscle the state AGs into line. The reality is that a bailout masquerading as a settlement won’t solve the underlying problem. The powers that be are deluding themselves as to how long it will be before an unaddressed mortgage mess goes critical."
This week we’re going to hear a lot about "Supply Chain Disruption" and Friday we get Q4 GDP (again!) – last time it got a huge downward revision to 2.8%, now expected to kick back to 3.1% for some reason. Other fun stuff includes:
—– Monday, March 21st —–
8:30 AM ET: Chicago Fed National Activity Index (February). This is a composite index of other data.
10:00 AM: Existing Home Sales for February from the National Association of Realtors (NAR). The consensus is for sales of 5.15 million at a Seasonally Adjusted Annual Rate (SAAR) in February, down from 5.36 million SAAR in January.
This graph shows existing home sales, on a Seasonally Adjusted Annual Rate (SAAR) basis since 1993.
Housing economist Tom Lawler isforecasting a decline to 5 millon (SAAR) in February. This would put the months-of-supply in the low 8 months range.
Note: the NAR is working on benchmarking existing home sales for previous years with other industry data (expectations are for large downward revisions). These revisions are expected to be announced mid-year.
—– Tuesday, March 22nd —–
8:00 AM: Cleveland Fed President Sandra Pianalto will speak at the University of Akron Economic Summit "The Economy: 2011 and Beyond."
10:00 AM: FHFA House Price Index for January. This is based on GSE repeat sales and is no longer as closely followed as Case-Shiller (or CoreLogic).
10:00 AM: Richmond Fed Manufacturing Survey for March. The consensus is for a slight decrease to 24 from 25 in February.
—– Wednesday, March 23rd —–
Early: The AIA’s Architecture Billings Index for February (a leading indicator for commercial real estate).
This graph shows the Architecture Billings Index since 1996. The index showed billings were at the same level in January as in December (at 50).
This index usually leads investment in non-residential structures (hotels, malls, office) by 9 to 12 months.
7:00 AM: The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) will release the mortgage purchase applications index. This index has been very weak over the last couple months suggesting weak home sales through the first few months of 2011.
10:00 AM: New Home Sales for February from the Census Bureau. The consensus is for an increase in sales to 290 thousand (SAAR) in February from 284 thousand in January.
This graph shows New Home Sales since 1963. The dashed line is the current sales rate.
New home sales collapsed in May and have averaged only 293 thousand (SAAR) over the last nine months. Prior to the last nine months, the record low was 338 thousand in Sept 1981.
12:00 PM: Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke will speak at the Independent Community Bankers of America National Convention and Techworld, San Diego, California "Community Banking in a Period of Recovery and Change"
—– Thursday, March 24th —–
8:30 AM: The initial weekly unemployment claims report will be released. The consensus is for a decrease to 383,000 from 385,000 last week.
8:30 AM: Durable Goods Orders for February from the Census Bureau. The consensus is for a 1.5% increase in durable goods orders after increasing 2.7% in January.
7:30 PM: Fed Governor Elizabeth Duke will speak at the Virginia Association of Economists Sandridge Lecture, Richmond, Virginia "Changing Circumstances: The Impact of the Financial Crisis on Wealth"
—– Friday, March 25th —–
8:30 AM: Gross Domestic Product, 4th quarter 2010 (third estimate);
Corporate Profits, 4th quarter 2010. This is the third estimate for Q4 from the BEA, and the consensus is for real GDP growth to be revised to an increase of 3.1% annualized from the second estimate of 2.8%.
9:55 AM: Reuter’s/University of Michigan’s Consumer sentiment index(final for March). The consensus is for a decrease to 68.0 from the preliminary reading of 68.2. This has declined because of higher gasoline prices, and possibly world events.
10:00 AM: Regional and State Employment and Unemployment for February 2011
12:00 PM: Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization (Annual Revision)
Note: Speeches from Philadelphia Fed President Charles Plosser, Minneapolis Fed President Narayana Kocherlakota, and Atlanta Fed president Dennis Lockhart.
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When the Feds and the Author compute CPI they are omitting the biggest factor: taxes. Consumers pay taxes of every form and usually taxes constitute the single largest expenditure. To omit them is ridiculous. The author also negects to mention "free trade" as the greatest factor in the war on the middle class. Otherwise, bully.
So is Reggie posting under "ilene" now?
Owner's Equivalent Rent = Farce
False Gods Always Seek Something For Nothing
The problem remains the same , false gods and false prophets, sometimes called economists, but always money-changers somewhere in the corporate nexus property chain, desperate to prove false assumptions in every known dimension, breeding in the assumptions from birth, before the individual brain has an opportunity to develop a healthy balance across the fulcrum, to the end of the latest empire of false boundaries, built specifically to pump in irrational supply and pump wealth back out across the membrane, from those who earn it in the present to those controlling the gates built in the past, on an exponential curve of consumption half-cycles that compose a black hole with momentum over time, until it becomes a virus and consumes everything in its known dimensions.
The release mechanism was separated before it was stolen and then distributed through efficient best-business-practices across a global economy that is now imploding to reconstitute and trigger the mechanism, which will catapult the pod forward when the black hole snaps, for those who were intelligent enough to swim beyond the known dimensions of the current. Those who control an economy in the present can only see the past, as all their proffered solutions demonstrate. They are, by nature, thieves, which is neither good nor bad; it just is. A lot of times 2 and 2 can be made to equal 3, but sometimes it equals much, much more that 4.
Evolution, like everything else, is a function of quantum physics. Spirit precedes emotion which precedes outcomes, not the other way around. The future is created, which is why there is no evidence of God in time. Time is the artifice. Economic profit is a function of intelligent investment in the future on the front end, not the back end. Therefore, love is patient, by choice and unconditionally, exactly the opposite of practice within an empire.
Understanding is one thing; practice is another, which is why effective parents are required, to build the platform upon which the children and empire stand. The voices in the heads of the masses are History, which is exactly wrong, which is why History repeats itself as a self-fulfilling prophesy. Time is the illusion, which is the secret to creation, and there is no time like the present.
Barron's is elitist propaganda, or worse---disinformation. Phil, or is it Ilene---or a 2 personality trannie? Lauding the NYT, the ultimate in Progressive rags? Isn't is amazing that "all the news that fit to print" is full of pro-Administration indoctrination; and don't forget Krugman, the most delusional economist on the planet. No stories on the new GOM oil sheen or follow-up on the 1000s with illnesses.
Phil should stick to "talking his book" and bashing conservatives rather than shilling for the NYT, even though all of his arguments are just so lame.
AMERICAN WORKERS CONTINUE TO DELIVER WITH STRONG PRODUCTIVITY, BUT HAVE NOT BEEN SEEING THE BENEFITS OVER THE PAST DECADE. THIS CAN BE LINKED WITH THE DECLINE OF SMALL BUSINESSES AS WELL. SO WHERE HAS THE MONEY GONE?:
International banksters and corporate cronies are first in line to borrow newly printed paper money, and with it they buy up greater amounts of human and physical assets. Small businesses, local farmers, and other individuals are last in line to receive the monopolized fiat (paper) currency, and must borrow at a higher rate. The result is a corporate/government/banking kleptocracy which causes average Americans to file in as employees and work harder and harder without seeing the benefits. First, one-income households must become two income households to survive, then children must be forgone, then benefits must be cut and services reduced - all so the centralized monopoly can be fed more and more and more.
WHEN WE END THE PRIVATE FEDERAL RESERVE BANKING MONOPOLY ON 'LEGAL TENDER' WE WILL REGAIN OUR COUNTRY.
What do you think of this idea?
http://www.philstockworld.com/2011/03/20/wisconsin-broke-unless-you-coun...
(Ellen Brown's WISCONSIN: BROKE UNLESS YOU COUNT THE $67 BILLION . . .)
It would be better than having Wall Street rip off the states, but it would end up in the same place. They'd fail because of mismanagement and/or incompetence. It would be more likely to lead to even more corruption if that's possible.
I'd rather that every state just print its own currency, as much as they want, to fuck over the banks who perpetuate this terrible fallacy that we somehow need them and need to have a healthy rate of inflation so we can continue to pay them interest for money they create out of thin air. The government could just as easily do that with the same effect at a far cheaper cost with the results being the same.
Why does the government print money to hand to the Federal Reserve and then borrow it back from them and pay interest? That's stupid and pathetic. Just skip the Fed and don't pay anything back. Same god damned result.
I totally agree the CPI is worthless. I have been keeping track of my household expenses, and for 2010 my inflation rate was 8.38% versus the "official" CPI rate of 1.5%. So far in 2011, prices have risen 3.57%, which is over 14% on an annualized basis.
If anyone is interested, I have posted my "Personal CPI" numbers at
verifythecpi.blogspot.com.
Surprisingly less political (blame the right, hail the left) than most of Ilene's postings. Refreshing.
"Why has pay fared so poorly overall?"
good question but i think you noted the basic theme - the economy, through taxation and regulation policy, favors the wealthy....fiscal policy drives the other two and the federal reserve's monopoly on currency value is always exuberantly supporting the plutocrats...
i have never advocated high taxes or more taxes but i think the time has come to tax the wealthy....they and the system they have created have injured americans - although that indeed was the goal...we live in a feudalistic economy.
the justification for heavy taxes on the wealthy is that they benefit way out of proportion to that of joe shit the rag bag who shovels shit for a living or who fights wars of foreign aggression for his plutocratic boss....
the plutocrats are greedy and so are the socialists and thus ensues a civil war which the plutocrats have won...but they are the barbarians who have sacked rome....
we must note that capital destruction plays a role in wage decline but in the face of increasing productivity we must observe that enough capital has been invested even if it could be higher.
outsourcing has not helped wages either. competing with 3d world countries is not an engagement in which any 1st world nation should engage. but, the docile compliant american wanted to play....open borders have been an utter disaster just as rome discovered.
the plutocrats are citizens of the world and thus of no nation....they move seamlessly across borders and have nothing but utter contempt for americans just has stanley dunham uttered her famous vitrioloc renunciation of americans - a contempt which she passed to her son.
This piece is all over the place, like an attack of the runs.
If Barron's has your back, you'd best be wearing the male equivalent of a chastity belt.
+1 Dropped Soap
This:
imagine what happens when financial advisors like Goldman begin telling their people to "diversify" back into housing and the top 1% begin to buy 5, 10, 20, 40 homes as investments – driving up the prices for the bottom 99% as they begin flipping homes with each other again. Even worse, this activity quickly leads to an increase in mortgage rates, as the pool of available capital is sucked up by people with the best credit.
Seems insane. The shadow market of homes that have been foreclosed upon, are in the process of being foreclosed upon or have occupants who haven't made a mortgage payment in several months is HUGE. The time frame for the housing market bouncing back is probably on the order of several years to more than a decade. The baby boomers will be dying, moving to Florida condos etc but not buying new homes. Students now in their 20's have graduated with massive amounts of non-dischargeable student loans. Where is the demand going to come from that will raise prices?!
Buy Japan? Surely you jest! (waiting for The reply)
Worth the read with good information.
The title hooked me - then I did a quick scan of your latest piece. You did not disappoint - same old crap, different day.
Note to self -- don't read ilene anymore. Nothing but shallow thnking with poor writing to boot!
The situation is getting serious. From the Houston Chronicle.
Police say the customer, who allegedly was unhappy that the price of what he was ordering at Taco Bell had gone up, is accused of shooting an air gun at the restaurant manager, displaying a semiautomatic assault rifle and pistol, then exchanging gunfire with three officers.
The Express-News said the man was ordering seven Beefy Crunch Burritos and was surprised to learn that the price had gone from 99 cents to $1.49.
Wow, such excitement. Buffet and his like are mealworms.
barrons track record is spotty at best
Yup. Just ask a married couple with traditional mortgage and a couple of kids approaching college age how they feel about the CPI! LOL.
#####
shape but prices do keep rising and that makes Corporate Revenues rise (even if they sell the same number of
units)
####
missy.. try to get handle on macro-data..
here's from latest monthly CBO preview
http://cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=12088
if 'Corporate Revenues rise' would be the case, then
FED CORP TAXES would be up y/y.. right???
its called logic.. more revenues, more taxable income
well according real hard-core data.. thats not true..
'corp income' down %16.5 y/y... so seems revenues are falling..
good luck
alx
Is that true? For example I thought GE paid a negative real marginal tax rate, so presumably as their revenues grow US taxes collected should decrease... If companies that utilize tax loopholes do better than companies that pay taxes, then taxes collected could drop even if overall profits are up.
Stop trying to make sense!
Next you'll be talking about Magazine Cover Indicators!