Parnelli

The stock market is back to almost being even on the year (after being up almost 9% YTD just a few weeks ago).
I am NOT interested into turning this into a political discussion but as an investment advisor i AM interested in hearing anecdotal evidence of how you are seeing things currently in your businesses.

THX!

utahrock

My business is busy - as busy as it has ever been. I know a number of small manufacturers and machine shops and everyone I know is very busy, too. We're having a bit of trouble finding shops to do some outside work with reasonable lead times.

BTW, our business is international and sales are strong everywhere. We even sell into China; there is an increasingly large market there for quality western goods.

If I didn't watch the news, I'd think these were boom times... It's hard for me to reconcile what I see with those depressing news stories.

goofballdeluxe

If you're rich, things are great.

If you're middle class, you're slowly sinking. Or maybe quickly sinking.

If you're poor, you're in trouble. And not on Rennlist.

tcsracing1

In Canada we are doing well. Strong housing market in most areas, strong dollar....

CP

I work in housing in the San Francisco Bay Area. This line of work barely exists here today.

I think the state of the 'economy' is highly segmented. If you are between 25 and 45 and have a job at places like Google, Apple, Face Book, Zinga etc. the economy is REALLY good. If you are 50+ and just got laid off from a middle management position that used to pay you $150k+, you're probably sh** out of luck.

CP

Dplus

Construction and construction related business here are hurting. Equipment rental, lumber, concrete, and decorative stone companies are experiencing huge layoffs. Several businesses have left the county/state for cheaper rents and permit fees. Building permits and the related septic system and well permits are down too. Building inspectors here are taking days without pay.

abiazis

Unemployment unacceptable.........but let's build some stuff in war torn and third world nations with a few bucks of our taxpayer money...............ghettos in DC a few blocks from the White House can wait......

PNogC2S

I look around at the downsizing in many sectors then hear about the recovery and can't help but think its "the Emperors new clothes".
Lot's of "efficiency" and "rightsizing" initiatives under way at large financial companies.

trophy

I am in Calgary, Alberta. We are an oil and gas town so when prices are good so is the outlook, thankfully the downsizing and rightsizing seems to be finished here.

2010 was our best year ever and we were up over 35% over the previous year, and this year is already shaping up to exceed last year by 10 to 15%. Clients are starting to spend, we are getting more and more inquiries for our services (Consulting, Leadership development etc). I still think there is more opportunity for growth, I see the news in the US and sometimes think how can our southerly neighbor be suffering the way it is and we remain fairly buoyant..

Housing prices are growing slowly again, nothing as crazy as 06/07 but some solid strength in the market.

goofballdeluxe

Well, your government didn't allow the banks to pull the biggest money heist of all time, and then throw a trillion dollars of taxpayer money to bail them out, for one. There is massive corruption on all levels here. The U.S. economy has been a house of cards for a long time now, built on debt and fake growth.

Also, your country hasn't been spending two billion dollars every single day for the last decade (not an exaggeration) to fight wars and maintain an empire. We like stuff like that better than free healthcare for all and education for all, unlike you Canadians.

Little things like these are the reason why Canada is doing well. And we are not.

trophy

I do know that parts of this country are still suffering. For the US being a global police force comes at a price, i don't think that is right, and considering it is the poor tax payer that truly bears the cost at the end of the day, things need and should change.

For me, I am lucky, I live in Canada and enjoy a good living. My other option is Australia (I am Australian Born) which, apart from flood and fire, is still buoyant.

Personally I would like the US to suffer a little more so I can buy a house down there . But that is totally selfish.

CP

I am not even sure that the US wants to be a global police force. The cynical side of me says that folks like Cheney know that any kind of shooting war will transfer immense wealth to the defense sector. If they can prolong the process with a re-build (ala Marshal Plan re dux) even more wealth will flow.

The US has no history of watching Pentagon-related spending. That makes wealth transfer even that much easier. A LOT of people got VERY rich because of these wars/rebuilds (read Black Water). They know well enough to keep very low profiles.

The sad part is that in the U.S. today, these spreading the wealth occurs in virtually everything the country does, from defense, to health-care, to financial bail outs, to DOE grants, to infrastructure. Small wonders that we are totally broke.

CP

greenshoe

There's a lot of SoCal folks on this board, so I'd be curious to hear from them.

At least from my vantage point, it seems relatively flat. Not enough to suggest things are going to get worse, but not enough to suggest things are going to get better soon either.

I had a contractor come in the other week, and he admitted that it was very very tough on him and other contractors -- cash was very tight, not many people looking to do home improvements and construction and all that.

In film and tv, it is slow and steady - not dire but not overly great either. Less feature films in the pipeline (but bigger budgets on each one); a lot more tv (because you need to fill the 500 channels with stuff) but much smaller budgets that are being squeezed further. In short, there's work, but there's less money to go around for everyone - from agents to talent to crew and even to the studio itself as its becoming more expensive to promote and advertise to get people's attention -- the more noise there is out there, the more expensive it is to break out of that noise.

In LA, one way to gauge how well or badly the economy is doing is TRAFFIC. Traffic always sucks, but the stronger the economy, the worse traffic gets.

goofballdeluxe

I live in Los Angeles, born and raised here. I do voice-over work for a living. It's been the only job I've ever had; I literally started as a kid.

Glad I have over 35 years vested in two unions, but both my unions are slowly disintegrating, and if I were starting out now, I wouldn't have a snowballs chance in hell to get where I am now.

I'm 44 with two nice pensions coming my way when I retire, probably the only one of my friends that has a pension, let alone two. But I'm the rare case. Most are suffering here tremendously.

Big Labor is dead in this country, and with it, much of the protections that the middle class had. The salad days here are gone; it won't get measurably better for a long time, if ever. Very sad.

greenshoe

Problem is, a nation's institutions and infrastructure -- from roads/bridges to education to healthcare to law enforcement to defense to energy/electricity -- never gets less expensive. As a country gets wealthier, the cost of maintaining these institutions only gets more expensive.

And there are two ways to fund it: public funds (government) or private industry. But either way, the costs over time only go up and up as the country continues to prosper.

And the money has to come from somewhere. If it's publicly funded, government needs revenue. If it's privatized, the consumer pays in the form of higher and higher prices (i.e. escalating health insurance premiums).

The governments are screwed because they can't raise more revenue at this point unless big changes are made. Even if you argue that they should raise taxes, in reality even if government wanted to, they can't - it would be political suicide for any lawmaker to suggest that.

However, if certain constituents got off their moral high ground and stop with the "values based" puritanical BS, the government could raise a lot more revenue by:

- legalize gambling in all states
- make sports betting legal and taxable
- legalize drugs, regulate them and tax them
- legalize prostitution
- a guest worker program so they go from "cash only" to tax payers
- raise taxes on alcohol
- federal sales tax (tax consumption, encourage investment/savings)