“The company could disappear,” said Alcatel-Lucent CEO Michel Combes, not exactly the kind of wondrous hype CEOs normally sputter to bamboozle people into plowing their money into the company’s stock. The end, after two decades of ingenious Wall-Street engineering, fee extraction, fanciful accounting, executive wisdom, and brilliant strategic thinking.
Companies & Markets
Corporate Disease: Workers Are A Cost Not A Productive Resource
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on Corporate Disease: Workers Are A Cost Not A Productive Resource
The amount in Federal assistance received by families of workers in the fast-food industry, who’re dogged by low wages, part-time work, and scarce employer-provided health benefits, amounted to $7 billion per year. A way for the $200 billion industry to shuffle off part of the costs of doing business to the hapless taxpayer.
Earnings Season Starts With A Bang, So To Speak
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on Earnings Season Starts With A Bang, So To Speak
They’re getting hilarious, the shenanigans on Wall Street. Revenues have been lousy all year, and despite feverish cost cutting, earnings are sliding. The third quarter has been over for almost two weeks, but Q3 earnings estimates are still being pushed down. A lot! So that companies can “exceed expectations.” They’re now at stagnation levels. And stocks soar.
“Yellen Props Up Stocks” And Other Scary Data Points
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on “Yellen Props Up Stocks” And Other Scary Data Points
Alarm bells went off: “Yellen props stocks,” the headline read. Somebody needs to. Politicians are actively contemplating how to most effectively send the largest and brokest debtor in history into default. Corporate revenues can’t keep up with inflation. Earnings estimates and actual earnings growth plunge. And the S&P 500 soared 16% year to date.
Apple, After 2-Year Fight, Fails to Squash “Apfelkind” Café in Germany
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on Apple, After 2-Year Fight, Fails to Squash “Apfelkind” Café in Germany
Apple has become a legal juggernaut. It’s taking on everyone and everything for presumed violations of its patents and trademarks. Billions are at stake. Its bitten-into-apple logo is sacred. The color red is sacred. So are red apples of any kind, apparently. Then it tried to squash a cafe in Germany, owned by a stubborn entrepreneur with a vision.
Supercars In The US, Japan, and China: How QE And Corruption Boosted Sales
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on Supercars In The US, Japan, and China: How QE And Corruption Boosted Sales
Supercar-makers Lamborghini, Ferrari, and Rolls-Royce are reacting to the forces whacking global markets for luxury products: a corruption crackdown in China, Abenomics in Japan, and the Fed’s money-printing in the US. The idea that sales in China, which is printing billionaires by the dozens, are crashing is a hard-to-swallow concept for the industry.
S&P Threatens To Cut US Debt To Junk
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on S&P Threatens To Cut US Debt To Junk
“This sort of political brinkmanship is the dominant reason the rating is no longer ‘AAA,’” S&P ratings agency wrote in a research note. More ominously, it warned that if Congress failed to pass a debt-ceiling hike before the out-of-money date in mid-October, it would cut the U.S. to “selective default.” And then there would be the post-default era.
Bubble Trouble: Record Junk Bond Issuance, A Barrage Of IPOs, “Out Of Whack” Valuations, And Grim Earnings Growth
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on Bubble Trouble: Record Junk Bond Issuance, A Barrage Of IPOs, “Out Of Whack” Valuations, And Grim Earnings Growth
When Blackstone’s global head of private equity, Joseph Baratta, said Thursday night that “we” were “in the middle of an epic credit bubble,” the likes of which he hadn’t seen in his career, he knew whereof he spoke. Junk bond issuance hit an all-time record in September. IPOs are flying off the shelf. But earnings growth is grim – and plunging. What gives?
J.C. Penney And Goldman: Lies, Scams, And Rip-Offs
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on J.C. Penney And Goldman: Lies, Scams, And Rip-Offs
Why would anyone buy this crap? No, not the clothes in J.C. Penney’s stores – which practically no one is buying – but the shares it just sold. It desperately needed to raise capital because it’s bleeding cash and won’t be around much longer without lots of new cash to bleed. So it did. At a horrendous expense, overnight, to existing stockholders.
First Cracks (And Losses) In The Insane LBO Craze
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on First Cracks (And Losses) In The Insane LBO Craze
It could be an aberration. Or it could be the first visible crack in the insane leveraged buyout craze that has spread across the country: JPMorgan, Bank of America, and Goldman Sachs could get hit with a loss of up to $156 million on the $780 million in junk debt they pledged to sell to fund the buyout of teen-fashion retailer rue21. With consequences for investors.