cart before the horse? as usual.

[acroyear]

Recovery loses speed as consumers turn cautious - Yahoo! News:

The recovery lost momentum in the spring as growth slowed to a 2.4 percent pace, its most sluggish showing in nearly a year and too weak to drive down unemployment.

Hasn't it occurred to you people that maybe, just maybe, the high unemployment and the continued threat of losing a job in an instant due to one little mistake or uncontrollable circumstance (consider 18 nurses, YES! NURSES, PEOPLE WE REALLY NEED MORE OF, fired because they couldn't get out of their homes in an 26" blizzard), might MAYBE be causing people to hold back on excessive shopping for non-necessities?

Jobs have to come first. 

Big companies have to be willing to sacrifice the profit margin a little to keep that one more (dozen) on the payroll.*

Little companies have to be able to get short-term loans from banks to keep cash flow happening.

Until either of those two issues start happening again, the economy will NEVER recover.

So quit looking to the consumer who has no money and look to the banks and the corporations that DO have money but refuse to spend it the way they're supposed to.

[* and if I hear again that blankityblank commercial where a bunch of idiotic hicks spout off about how raising gas taxes would hurt "the economy", when the only reason it would hurt is because Big Oil will raise rates rather than lose that tiny bit of their ridiculous profit margin, I'm going to throw up.]

Comments

[stori-lundi.livejournal.com]

So true. Companies are quick to lay people off instead of keeping them around on overhead for a bit to find them more work. I don't think they factor in the costs of actually hiring someone as opposed to pulling someone off the bench that can start right away.

The whole nurses being fired made me ill. My mother, a nurse, finally retired in disgust because of her hospital's policies. It's just criminal the way they treat their employees. For example, she couldn't use any of her sick leave until she used up all of her vacation leave. How dumbass is that? Because the last thing you want in a hospital ward is a sick nurse.

[rmblktty.livejournal.com]

I will second your opinion here. Thanks for the post. :-) I keep hoping for someone to see the light at the end of the tunnel.