It is earnings season on Wall Street, and let me tell you if you were not watching CNBC you have no idea of what horrible results are rolling in from almost every corporation listed on the NYSE and the NASDAQ. Companies such as Apple and Google have dropped bombshells of drops in margins and sales, while the “stalwarts” of the NYSE such as DuPont and Dow Chemical miss sales marks and give grim future outlooks.
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Dow Chemical corporate headquarters in Midland, Michigan (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The most alarming statistic that is being announced by almost all is their intent to “meet profit goals” by “reducing employees”. That is right over and over these mega corporations sitting on TRILLIONS of dollars in cash, are planning a MASSIVE purge of more of its workers to the ranks of the unemployed. In fact over 100,000 job cuts have been announced and still plenty of companies still need to report over the next week.
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Now I am sure you have heard about unemployment officially sitting at 7.8%. Perhaps you have heard that true unemployment based on numbers from John Williams Shadowstats is sitting at 22% when you include people whom have given up looking for jobs or working a part time job. Most of the recent round of job cuts will come over the next two months placing a huge increase in the unemployed numbers around the end of the year. Imagine that impact combined with the “fiscal cliff” that as a nation we are staring at including $1.4 trillion dollars in tax increases for those that have jobs left.
Here is a smattering of the job cut announcements.
1. Dow Chemical has announced that it will be closing about 20 plants and will be letting about 2,400 workers go.
2. Colgate-Palmolive has announced that they will be eliminating about 2,300 jobs.
3. DuPont has announced plans to eliminate about 1,500 jobs.
4. Ford has announced that it will be eliminating 6,200 jobs and will be reducing production capacity in Europe by 18 percent.
5. Hewlett-Packard announced last month that they plan to eliminate 29,000 jobs.
6. Chip maker AMD has announced that they will be getting rid of about 15 percent of their workers.
7. Sony has announced plans to reduce their workforce by about 2,000 workers.
8. Electronics manufacturer Sharp reportedly plans to eliminate 11,000 jobs.
9. Engine maker Cummins Inc. has announced that they plan to get rid of about 1,500 jobs by the end of 2012.
10. Earlier this month Applied Materials announced a plan that will eliminate up to 1,300 jobs.
11. Zynga (known for making video games for Facebook such as FarmVille) has announced that they are reducing their workforce by about 5 percent.
12. Lattice Semiconductor has announced plans to eliminate about 13 percent of their jobs.
13. Alcatel-Lucent recently announced a plan to eliminate more than 5000 jobs all over the globe.
14. Siemens AG has announced that the number of positions being eliminated may reach 10,000 by the end of the year.
15. Banking giant UBS plans to eliminate up to 5,000 jobs.
Today millions of Americans are waking up in tents, homeless, and with no chance of getting any type of job. Millions of others are waking up with needing to have a conversation with their spouse that they are about to lose their job, their pay is being cut, their health insurance rates are going up, or that they no longer can even stand working at the job they have because of horrible working conditions.
As I have mentioned in dozens of articles over the past year, the American economy is sitting on the brink of utter collapse, which will bring millions of the jobless on to the streets. Are you prepared for that moment in time?
