{"id":5631,"date":"2015-02-13T06:26:10","date_gmt":"2015-02-13T11:26:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=5631"},"modified":"2015-02-13T06:26:10","modified_gmt":"2015-02-13T11:26:10","slug":"something-rotten-is-piling-up-in-this-economy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=5631","title":{"rendered":"Something Rotten Is Piling Up in this Economy"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"http:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/2015\/02\/13\/something-rotten-is-piling-up-in-this-economy\/\" target=\"_blank\">Something Rotten Is Piling Up in this Economy<\/a><\/h3>\n<p><strong>Total US business inventories balloon to Lehman-Moment levels<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe do have more work to do in the US,\u201d admitted John Bryant, CEO of Kellogg\u2019s which makes Pringles, Pop Tarts, Kashi Cereal, and a million other things that consumers are increasingly reluctant or unable to buy. He was trying to explain the crummy quarterly results and the big-fat operating loss of $422 million, along with a lousy outlook that sent its stock careening down 4.5% during the rest of the day.<\/p>\n<p>A peculiar side note: he also said that the \u201cRussian business posted good results in the quarter and for the full year\u201d \u2013 despite the ruble crash\u00a0and whatever sanctions might have gotten in the way.<\/p>\n<p>Then in the evening, ConAgra, with brands like Healthy Choice for consumers and something yummy they call \u201ccommercial food\u201d for restaurants, cut its fiscal 2015 earnings guidance, citing a laundry list of problems, including the \u201cstrengthening dollar\u201d and \u201ca higher-than-planned mark-to-market loss from certain commodity index hedges.\u201d But it blamed two operating issues \u201cfor the majority of the EPS cut: \u201ca highly competitive bidding environment\u201d and \u201cexecution shortfalls.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>After which confession time\u00a0<em>still<\/em>\u00a0wasn\u2019t over: it would be \u201cevaluating the need\u201d for additional write-offs. What had gone well? Cost cutting \u2013 \u201cstrong SG&amp;A efficiencies,\u201d the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.conagrafoods.com\/investor-relations\/news-ConAgra-Foods-Revises-Fiscal-2015-EPS-Outlook--Fiscal-2015-Comparable-EPS-213-218--Fiscal-2015-Debt-Reduction-Goal-Reaffirmed--Commitment-to-Strong-Dividend-Reaffirmed-2016465\">statement<\/a>\u00a0called it. But the pandemic cost-cutting by corporate America represents wages and other companies\u2019 sales.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Something Rotten Is Piling Up in this Economy Total US business inventories balloon to Lehman-Moment levels \u201cWe do have more work to do in the US,\u201d admitted John Bryant, CEO of Kellogg\u2019s which makes Pringles, Pop Tarts, Kashi Cereal, and a million other things that consumers are increasingly reluctant or unable to buy. He was [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[151,3490,195,3489,839,841,1808],"class_list":["post-5631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-commodities","tag-cost-cutting","tag-debt","tag-deleveragin","tag-us-dollar","tag-us-economy","tag-wages"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5631"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5631\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5632,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5631\/revisions\/5632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}