Rating Stocks
What is the real Barometer for the economy, Stocks, Unemployment Rate or Wages?
With most large corporations being so multinational today, I don’t think the stock market is a good economic barometer anymore.
I’m sorry I wasn’t more specific. Because of the multinational essence of most modern Corporations, a corporation can do a lot of growth and be very successful, but that success be felt in other countries, not in America, because they’re not expanding in America.
I’d say it’s pretty much a balance of unemployment rate *and* wages. Obviously the economy is not doing well when there’s so many unemployed, and when those numbers rise, that seems to be where the panic starts. But if anyone had paid attention to wage levels, especially comparison between the low-wage-earners and the high-wage-earners and the insane difference between the two, they would have seen this coming a mile away.
We need to have both high rates of employment and higher wages (ie: quality over quantity in job creation) for those that are working. Wages for just about everyone but the wealthy have stagnated or even gone down, and definitely haven’t kept up with inflation. Most working people don’t make a “living wage” anymore, regardless of education levels, and people wonder why credit card debt and the like is at an all-time high. You can’t “live within your means” when your means don’t cover the necessities!
Stocks are only important for those who have the money to buy them, and thus aren’t a very good barometer of the economy as a whole. The only stocks those of us at the bottom of the totem pole have are their 401Ks in which we’re *gambling* for our retirement (something I find to be a deplorable practice anyways), and we don’t own anywhere near enough stock in those to compete with the wealthy, or effect the bottom line.
June 16: Stocks Mostly Fall on Bank Ratings