This FEB/MAR/APRIL you could feel the optimism in the air. Wall street activity & the dow “said” it was all looking good. The on-the-street reality is somewhat different: stubborn un-employment, continued mixed picture in housing, caution in consumer spending, continued productivity + slack in manufactiuring capacity due to 2005-7 ramp ups…and outside of the “money center banks”, we have banking instability & credit tightness. State revenue gaps are the next issue.
In pulsing CEOs, i’ve seen a few threads:
- In manufacturing and in construction, capacity slack and desire to preserve key employee skills is driving below cost bidding.
- Gov’t related work is still a dominate source of work
- Deep concerns about access to credit in “normal projects”…banks are just now re-entering…prompting companies to think through how “they bring their own financing to projects…”
- Cash mgmt still upper most on their minds
Several huge questions:
- Where & what do you invest in with “confidence”?
- Where will job growth come from? what societal implications are there from the systematic un-employment?
- Implications of a “slow” credit economy, especially for the small biz sector and construction/infrastructure projects?
