19 FEB 2013, Tuesday

• I'm all for corporate profitability, but the above chart (from Federal Reserve databases) seems to indicate that things aren't quite normal...historically speaking.
• If corporate profits are, in fact, stretched to unsustainable levels as this graphic may suggest...and profits are what drive stock market advances (ya know...historically speaking before all this Quantitative Easing (QE) nonsense)...well, I'll just leave you to draw your own conclusions.  (My opinion...The Secular Bear is not yet over.)
• And at the risk of being labeled as a 'socialist', which I'm not, it is interesting to see the relationship between corporate profitability and wages since the year 2000...No?  Where has the profitability come from?
• In the long run, it seems that American wages will drop toward Chinese & Indian wages or Chinese & Indian wages will rise toward American wages.  So far, the jury seems pretty certain which way this is going to occur.
• Our kids and grand kids live in a very different world then we grew up in!  We were insulated because the world was so big.  Now, it's a small, small world indeed.