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CEO Confidence Tumbles To 2014 Lows
Q1 GDP growth in the US was simply abysmal - its worst in 3 years - but that does not matter as hope springs eternal that Spring is sprung and it's all green shoots from here. However... that's not what we are seeing in personal spending data (biggest miss in over 4 years in April) and now Bloomberg's Orange Book which implicitly tracks CEO Confidence via their comments has dropped back to the year's lows - not what we are being told by the talking-heads who promulgate the hockey-stick faith in our central planners.
Perhaps Campbell's Soup CEO summed it up best:
Campbell Soup [CPB] Earnings Call 5/19/14: “I’m disappointed that we failed to deliver the sales growth that we anticipated in the third quarter.
We believe this is in part a reflection of the persistence of an exceptionally challenging consumer environment.
As many others in the industry have noted, consumers are suffering from continuing underemployment, reductions in the SNAP program and rising home, fuel and healthcare costs. In combination, these factors are significantly affecting purchasing behavior, pressuring the performance of a number of our key customers and constraining growth across the industry, particularly in center store categories.”
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bonus time again!
Somebody had to tumble, might as well have thrown the Fed in the kettle too.
$10 million/yr average CEO pay and "no confidence".
O' boy... what year is this?
How fucked up is the consumer when he can not scrap the spare change necessary to buy a fucking can of soup?
"Now introducing McSoup on the dollar menu!"
can of no chicken noodle broth for 75 cent ? .... no way .
"They have never been poor. They have never known the joys of a welfare Christmas."
-Everclear
I bought a can of Campbells Chunky Chicken something-or-other this winter for a quick meal (normally make my own soup), opened it and poured it in the pot to heat. While stirring it I was looking for the chicken amongst the noodles, some celery, carrots, and salt-water. I finally found .... ONE CHUNK ... and that was it.
$1.79 for one chunk of bird about 1/2" cubed, a few cents of noodles and veggies, and salt water. You think I will ever buy that shit again? Fuck Campbells and corporate amerika.
But you're getting a hell of a deal on all of those high-tech additives!
I don't think we have consumers anymore. We have Survivors and they are scraping to just get by. And then we have the Wall Street Hampton class who sees 4% economy for the rest of the year.
Multinational corporations CEO's can go fuck themselves! Scumbag rat bastards.
Who gives a fuck about CEO confidence when we have Kevin Henry to move markets higher all the time? Who gives a fuck about reality when we have a pleasant virtuality (TM) that never ends?
If these CEO's would just man up, cut costs by cutting their bloated payrolls and staffing they'd see a remarkable improvement in revenue from the recently unemployed consumers they helped create. Not that hard to fix this thing ya see?
And to think Campbell Soup is supposed to be mmmm mmmm good...especially when its cold.
You can eat it hot in summer time for free in the right places.
Just remember to park the car facing south before you run out of fuel, and it's dashboard cookin' time!
All Campbell's needs to do is to sell their operation to Aldi's, as they seem to do a booming business these days. They've even got their own parking lots for discriminating chefs.
Boom... 2014 uncirculated eagles purchased for 21.67 out the door niggas.....
How's that for confidence!
Also, for the fuck of it...Ima pay off the last of my car note.....take another loan out of the fractional reserve banking system....and I won't be getting another one....debt free bitchez
Sooooo, the CEOs (Cheap Expletive Orificers) running America's new brand of bend-over capitalism are losing confidence, eh? They're blaming their failure to meet forecasts on the consumer, eh? What's a CEO to do when rendering an acct to the greedy shareholders?
MOTS - More Of The Same - keep promising, keep lying and keep making ever deeper employee cuts, and keep making those employees remaining to bend over and take the rusty pipe up the bunghole. And don't forget outsourcing our jobs to Inja and Cheena. Such a performance will surely be worth an even bigger bonus than last year!
Classic playbook.
And it's always perpetual growth; there is no such thing as perpetual growth.
I feel your pain brother, i'm out of morphine temporarly, just hold on long enough and you'll be there.
Yea I didn't see the CEOs wringing their hands in worry when the Fed was bailing them all out....perhaps even that turnip has been wrung dry.
CEOs should feel confident that tar and feathers are the next great bull market in the U.S.
Stability is not really the mental position of these CEO's.
So we're in an 'exceptionally challenging consumer environment,' yet we have record high stocks. Makes perfect sense.
At an average of $10 Million/year salary if these CEO's aren't confident they may be starting to smell the rot.
I don't buy Campbell's or name brands, the generics are just as good and 33% less.
The only thing I buy name brand is Hellman's mayonnaise (Best Foods West of the Rocky Mountains).
"...consumers are suffering from continuing underemployment, reductions in the SNAP program and rising home, fuel and healthcare costs."
No shit Sherlock; please forward to the FED and .gov.
Just in: Jay Carney is out as Press Secretary in June.
This news is obviously bearish on gold.
His replacement will likely boost Russian stocks another 10%.
No it's all about saving health care, on the backs of the youth no less.
People are...gasp...cooking their own food. Found out soup is super, super cheap to make yourself.
And it contains 100% more food.
We don't any processed "food" anymore. It's all soybean oil, HFCS, cottonseed oil, and whatever else that comes out of the lab.
There are people that need hiring...and people that need firing.
Hope you all start choosing the right ones. "So far, so bad."
Yeah, those targets float around like an amusement game on steroids.
I think it was Rickards who said the shit will really hit the fan when people lose faith in the central bank. Once people finally realize we're in a full blown recession, people will run for the door. Insiders have already left the burning building and are piling into bonds and gold.
Joe Sixpack has no awareness of central banking, let alone a reason to have faith in it.
Besides, if they start losing faith in the status quo, they'll lemming on down to the voting booth to "fix" it all.
You know, more of what got us here.
It's only May 30th....I don't think the 2014 low has been defined just yet.
CEO's with record profits can go fuck their worry!
the CEO's on the consumer sectors see the same thing we do, and what can they do about it? THere is no "organic growth", ( I love that term). You can only cut so far, so many M&A's ( pinnacle, hillsboro, tyson merry-go-round). Retail is dead for the forseeable future, auto's are stacking up or getting recalled, medical is skyrocketing ( I work in that sector, and you ain't see nuttin yet), taxes are now directly attributed to GDP ( good deep penetration), and they are dumping kids on the border, like leaving them on a door step. ( no coincidence).
Time to start shooting, it is inevidable.
Well, they just need to sell MOAR bonds to buyback their stocks.
Question is, when will that be considered CapEx?
OT
Breaking news: "Los Angeles sues JPMorgan over mortgage lending practices"
Now THAT'S what I'm talking about: pit the thieves against each other. TARP for lawyers.