Layoffs May Worsen if Economic Growth Doesn't Pick Up

You might as well say something like, the sky may turn blue once the sun rises. Because as sure as the sun rises every day, economic growth will not pick up. How can it?

A service sector economy is completely unsustainable, because it doesn't create wealth. If we don't produce anything, where does the money come from? All of our goods are created in China, and therefore that's where all our wealth is going. If it's not coming back in from somewhere, then sooner or later we run out of it. Common sense enough for you?

The only source at that point is the Fed's printing presses, which devalues the currency and causes prices to rise. Where does the money come from; where do the jobs come from, especially when Obama's jobs czar, Jeffery Immelt, who is also the CEO of General Electric, is shipping tens of thousands of jobs to China? When Hummers are now made in Brazil? Who can grow enough to hire people when there's no money left, or when the money they do have can't counter inflation? This is so fundamental.

CNBC -

Thousands of layoffs were announced in just the past week, and that trend could continue if economic growth does not start to pick up speed.

Merck [MRK 34.13 -0.80 (-2.29%) ] on Friday became the latest company to announce a new round of job cuts, saying it would trim 13,000 employees from its work force of 91,000 by 2015. It joins HSBC, which is reported to be trimming 10,000 jobs from its global staff, and Borders, letting go another 10,700 workers, as it shuts down all of its retail stores.

"These heavy cuts are a sign the economy is stalling. The GDP numbers back it up. This is a concrete result of what you get when you see GDP stalling under 2 percent, like we've seen for two consecutive quarters," said John Challenger, CEO of Challenger Gray and Christmas, which monitors layoffs.

"It's across the board industries. It's not like the auto sector or something doing poorly. We are seeing pharmaceuticals; defense; retailers - in terms of Borders; and financial firms - in terms of Goldman..It's so very broad-based and it certainly poses a risk to the economy turning around, as people lose their jobs, and a lot of consumers who support these companies lose their jobs," he said.

It's all over but the shouting. Read it all.