Marxist economist Michael Roberts warns of falling corporate profits. I believe one contribution is the continuing complexity of the world that is taking up more and more time to administer. See what you think.
The final estimate of US GDP in the fourth quarter of 2014 came out today. US real GDP growth was left unrevised at 2.2% year-on-year in the final three months of the year and the figure for the whole of 2014 was unrevised at 2.4%. Mainstream economists were keen to suggest that the current quarter in 2015 ending this week could show a pick-up.
But none mentioned the really important development – that corporate profits fell in the fourth quarter, increasing the risk of a new slump in investment in 2015-16. Profits fell $30.4 billion in the fourth quarter, in contrast to an increase of $64.5 billion in the third. This seems mainly due to a fall in profits from overseas as the dollar’s strength drove income gathered in other currencies down. This meant that corporate profits are lower by 0.2% from this time last year and are down 0.8%…
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Stephen Hinton Consulting 