A fog over New York, the world's financial center.
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CEO survey reveals deep gloom
By Laurent Belsie | 04.07.09
America’s CEOs are in a deep funk.
Their economic outlook for sales, employment, and capital spending in the next six months plunged to a record low, the Business Roundtable reported Tuesday. The group’s survey index fell to -5 from 16.5 in the first quarter of this year, the index’s first foray into negative territory in its six-year history and far below the 50-plus reading that would signal expansion.
Still optimistic?
“I think we’re really close to a bottom,” Harold “Terry” McGraw III, chairman of the Business Roundtable and chairman and CEO of The McGraw-Hill Companies, told reporters in a conference call. “We’ll start to see the pace of decline slowing down.”
The outlook of the 100 CEOs surveyed by the business organization didn’t reflect his optimism. The survey found that 71 percent expected their company’s employment level to drop in the next six months, up from 60 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008; 67 percent expected lower sales vs. 45 percent the previous quarter; and 66 percent predicted a drop in capital spending, up from 52 percent.
Markets more buoyant
The survey was taken last month during the run-up in the stock market, which has fueled hopes for recovery. But the CEOs – normally, an optimistic bunch – sound worried, which is not a good sign.
Comments
2. Jim Pietrowski | 04.07.09
Unfortunately we wouldn’t wake up some morning anytime soon and find our economy in better spirits. It’s going to take some trends that run some lengthy courses. And I agree, we have not hit bottom. So hurry bottom and get here. Then there’s the third party issue that will only bring the real change that our Country really needs!
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1. Jean Smilovitz | 04.07.09
I hardly think America’s “POOR” CEOs are in a deep funk given their lavish million-dollar salaries, options, bonuses and continued lavish ethic-less, moral-less, sense-of-entitlement at the expense of the taxpayer. These ‘banksters’ and robber-barons all need to be tarred and feathered, stripped of their citizenship and exiled to North Korea.