I would be hiring if.......

I recently heard a CEO that was being interviewed say he would be putting people on his payroll if he had some clarity as to where the economy was heading. He indicated he was looking for a positive sign before committing to expanding, Duh!  The gal doing the interview acted as if she had discovered the answer to all our economic problems. This is another way of saying "confidence" is the problem, but its not.

The reality is that much of what we see on the economic landscape is a mirage, all of us who own businesses would be adding workers if our phone was ringing off the hook and a demand existed for our products, but that situation simply does not exist. Like everyone else in my industry I'm sitting on empty office space and buildings, cutting cost, and waiting for demand to increase. Constructing more new buildings while paying taxes, insurance, and maintaining a huge supply of empty space makes no sense except to those in government that are not using their own money.

If things were so good, or getting better, the Federal Reserve would not have recently been forced to add new props to the economy through more monetary easing. During a interview last week when asked about the looming "fiscal cliff" former Congressman Ron Paul said we had already gone over it. If he is correct the reason we are not feeling a great deal of pain is that we have not yet hit bottom. The numbers we have to deal with are incredible, they do not add up, they do not work. Much like Greece and Spain who also kicked the can down the road, America can not avoid reality for ever.

It appears many people have been caught up in the hype that things are getting better, but that does not make it so. What I am seeing is "fluff", much like what Texans years ago referred to "all hat and no cattle", the people I'm coming in contact with lately lack substance. Like a Texan that is all talk and has neither a ranch or any money most new business start-ups lack funding and have a weak business plan, this bodes poorly for the hiring picture going forward.


Footnote; A recent post on April 21, 2013 goes into the issue of inequality and how the burden of work must be spread out over a larger part of the population, if you have time the link is below,

                        http://brucewilds.blogspot.com/2013/04/society-must-better-divide-labor.html