Tag Archives: Caterpillar

“Our Data Is Not Good” – US Companies Warn That A Recession Is Coming, by Tyler Durden

Posted on October 26, 2015 | 1 comment

SLL isn’t the only one saying recession is coming. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

Earlier this month, we highlighted comments from new Fastenal CEO (and former CFO) Dan Florness who, on the company’s Q3 call, took homage to one analyst’s suggestion that we’re currently in a “non-recessionary environment.” Here, as reminder, is the exchange:

William Blair’s Ryan Merkel: Then just lastly, Fastenal growing zero percent here in September and in a non-recessionary environment, it’s pretty surprising, I think, for a lot of us.

Florness: The industrial environment is in a recession – I don’t care what anybody says, because nobody knows that market better than we do. You know, we touch 250,000 active customers a month.

There you go. No ambiguity there. Nor was there anything ambiguous about some of the numbers Fastenal reported. For instance, in September, the company saw its first Y/Y sales decline since 2009.

And the nuts and bolts manufacturer isn’t alone.

As we’ve been keen on documenting, bellwether Caterpillar is in the midst of a truly historic sales slump that’s now entering its 35th month.

It’s fairly easy to explain this if one simply looks at what’s going on at the macro level. Everyone – the WTO, the OECD, the ADB, etc. – now seems to be of the opinion that we may have entered a new era wherein sluggish global growth and trade have become structural and endemic. China’s “hard landing” is both a symptom and a cause of the malaise and the excessively strong dollar isn’t doing US multinationals any favors either.

To continue reading: US Companies Warn That A Recession Is Coming

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If Caterpillar’s Data Is Right, This Is A Global Industrial Depression, by Tyler Durden

Posted on October 21, 2015 | 2 comments

Reality is catching up to SLL’s prediction of an impending depression. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

Most cats bounce at least once when they die, but not this one: after CAT posted its first annual drop in retail sales in December of 2012, it has failed to see a rise in retail sales even once.

In fact, since then Caterpillar has seen 34 consecutive months of declining global sales, and 11 consecutive months of double digit declines!

Why is this important? Because a month ago we asked: “What On Earth Is Going On With Caterpillar Sales?”

We have been covering the ongoing collapse in global manufacturing as tracked by Caterpillar retail sales for so long that there is nothing much to add.

Below we show the latest monthly data from CAT which is once again in negative territory across the board, but more importantly, the global headline retail drop (down another 11% in August) has been contracting for 33 consecutive months! This is not a recession; in fact the nearly 3 year constant contraction – the longest negative stretch in company history – is beyond what most economists would deem a depression.
We got the answer just three days later when the industrial bellwether confirmed the world is now in an industrial recession, when it not only slashed its earnings outlook, but announced it would fire a record 10,000.

Moments ago, CAT reported its latest monthly retail sales and they were even worse than last month: in the month of September there was not a single region that posted either a increase of an unchanged print. This was the first month in all of 2015 in which every region posted a drop.

To continue reading: This Is A Global Industrial Depression

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Forget Recession: According To Caterpillar There Is A Full-Blown Global Depression, by Tyler Durden

Posted on July 22, 2015 | Leave a comment

The economy is fine, really. Keep buying those stocks. Prosperity is just around the corner. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

One wouldn’t know it by looking at CAT stock, which has gone very much nowhere in the past 5 years thanks to just one thing – an exponential increase in the company’s share buybacks…

… but the company’s publicly disclosed monthly retail sales have just one message for anyone who follows them: forget recession, there is a global depression going on.

And it is not just in China as many would like to scapegoat: in June, in addition to a -19% drop in Asia Pacific (following a 30% Y/Y plunge a year ago, which in turn followed a 21% drop in 2013), US retail sales posted their first Y/Y decline since February, dropping by 5%.

But the real depression is in Latin America, where CAT retail sales plummeted by a whopping 50%: the most in reported history, and follow an 18% drop from a year earlier.

Summarizing it all, after an increasingly shallower series of dead CAT bounces in the past year, first thanks to Latin America, and then the US, global retail sales just dropped by 14% – marching the biggest Y/Y decline since the financial crisis.

And the cherry on top: there has now been an unprecedented 31 consecutive months of CAT retail sales declines. This compares to “only” 19 during the near systemic collapse in 2008.

In other words, if global demand for heavy industrial machinery, as opposed to unemployed millennials’ demands for $0.99 Apple apps, is any indication of the true underlying economy, forget recession: the world is now in a second great depression which is getting worse by the month.

Source: CAT

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-07-22/forget-recession-according-caterpillar-there-full-blown-global-depression

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Ex-Im Bank is Welfare for the One Percent, by Ron Paul

Posted on June 1, 2015 | Leave a comment

Caterpillar and Boeing are welfare queens. Who knew? From Ron Paul at the ronpaulinstitute.org:

This month Congress will consider whether to renew the charter of the Export-Import Bank (Ex-Im Bank). Ex-Im Bank is a New Deal-era federal program that uses taxpayer funds to subsidize the exports of American businesses. Foreign businesses, including state-owned corporations, also benefit from Ex-Im Bank. One country that has benefited from $1.5 billion of Ex-Im Bank loans is Russia. Venezuela, Pakistan, and China have also benefited from Ex-Im Bank loans.

With Ex-Im Bank’s track record of supporting countries that supposedly represent a threat to the US, one might expect neoconservatives, hawkish liberals, and other supporters of foreign intervention to be leading the effort to kill Ex-Im Bank. Yet, in an act of hypocrisy remarkable even by DC standards, many hawkish politicians, journalists, and foreign policy experts oppose ending Ex-Im Bank.

This seeming contradiction may be explained by the fact that Ex-Im Bank’s primary beneficiaries include some of America’s biggest and most politically powerful corporations. Many of Ex-Im Bank’s beneficiaries are also part of the industrial half of the military-industrial complex. These corporations are also major funders of think tanks and publications promoting an interventionist foreign policy.

Ex-Im Bank apologists claim that the bank primarily benefits small business. A look at the facts tells a different story. For example, in fiscal year 2014, 70 percent of the loans guaranteed by Ex-Im Bank’s largest program went to Caterpillar, which is hardly a small business.

Boeing, which is also no one’s idea of a small business, is the leading recipient of Ex-Im Bank aid. In fiscal year 2014 alone, Ex-Im Bank devoted 40 percent of its budget — $8.1 billion — to projects aiding Boeing. No wonder Ex-Im Bank is often called “Boeing’s bank.”

Taking money from working Americans, small businesses, and entrepreneurs to subsidize the exports of large corporations is the most indefensible form of redistribution. Yet many who criticize welfare for the poor on moral and constitutional grounds do not raise any objections to welfare for the rich.

http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2015/may/31/ex-im-bank-is-welfare-for-the-one-percent/

To continue reading: Ex-Im Bank is Welfare for the One Percent

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