Recovery Apartheid
by ilene - July 27th, 2010 8:50 pm
Recovery Apartheid
Courtesy of Joshua M. Brown, The Reformed Broker
Burger chains are killing it, neighborhood diners are hurting. Oil & gas companies are raking it in, gas station operators are closing. Mass merchandisers have a new pep in their step, mom and pop retailers can’t afford the lease anymore.
Get the picture?
This isn’t a class warfare post, this is a reality check about the Recovery Apartheid*. Large businesses that are asset-rich are benefiting from our Sorcerer’s Apprentice-like reflation policies (buckets and buckets sloshing over with corporate welfare). Anyone dependent on actual end-customer demand? Different story. Go ask a sole proprietor doing business on the main drag of your town.
Imagine if, instead of Earnings Season for the S&P 500, we had a 4 week stretch in which we heard from a different sector of Small Business each night on a series of conference calls. Imagine, if you will, that Monday night we heard from local restaurant and catering companies throughout the nation, then on Tuesday night we heard from auto dealerships, Wednesday night was machine repair shops, Thursday was real estate agencies, etc.
With my hypothetical Small Business Earnings Season in mind, I ask you the following…would the stock market have just posted an almost 4% gain since July 13th had that have been the case? Would anything said by a majority of America’s business owners on conference calls each night even come close to matching…