Earnings? We don’t need no stinking earnings! From Wolf Richter, at wolf street.com:
Stocks have soared. But despite maxed-out financial engineering and ceaseless Wall-Street hype, the first half is shaping up to be tough.
Week after week, corporations and analysts have been whittling down their estimates. By now, revenues of the S&P 500 companies are expected to decline 2.8% in Q1 from a year ago – the worst year-over-year decline since Q3 of crisis year 2009.
But the unstoppable healthcare sector is expected to see revenue growth of 9.1%, according to FactSet, with three sub-sectors seeing double-digit sales growth: Healthcare Technology (38%), Biotechnology (23%), and Health Care Providers & Services (11%).
That’s why no one in Congress, or anywhere else, wants to get healthcare expenditures under control. It may eat up Medicare, Medicaid, state healthcare programs, and retiree healthcare programs. It may be economically cannibalistic for the country. It may bankrupt municipalities and states. It may blow up federal programs. But in its manner, healthcare is the most vibrant growth sector in the US economy. Even if it lives on borrowed money and is bankrupting the nation, it’s growth!
