Defensive Crouch Due to Obama Leads to Corporate Health

Here, Bloomberg News tries to give credit for corporate America's unprecedented health to Obama.

They are among a chorus of corporate executives and lobbying groups that regularly assail Obama for policies that they say are stifling investment and hurting companies.

Corporate and economic statistics almost six years into his administration paint a different picture. Companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 (SPX) Index are the healthiest in decades, with the lowest net debt to earnings ratio in at least 24 years, $3.59 trillion in cash and marketable securities, and record earnings per share.

True, corporations are in excellent financial health.  The reason is that Obamanomics and Obama's gangster style of government (of which Henninger opines today) has so thoroughly degraded the investment climate that companies haven't been investing, but hoarding cash and paying down debt.  Thus they are healthy.  I predicted this years ago.

On another note, here is another story from Bloomberg News that highlights a small example of what we can expect to happen writ large across America, broke-ass governments - from cities to counties to states, and eventually the federal government - are going to be devolving the "services" they offer.

New York municipalities are getting out of the nursing-home business, ridding themselves of a financial burden just as baby boomers head into old age.

Four publicly owned homes for the elderly are on the block, after at least 11 of the 40 counties outside New York City that owned the safety nets for the poor sold or closed them since 1997, according to data compiled by Bloomberg and the Center for Governmental Research in Rochester.

The governments are responding as Wall Street takes note of the fiscal strain: Orange County, a New York City exurb, lost its top grade from Moody’s Investors Service in March and had its rating cut again in August. The company cited almost $37 million in subsidies to Valley View Center for Nursing Care & Rehabilitation since 2012. In contrast, Moody’s raised neighboring Rockland in July after the county found a buyer for its Summit Park Hospital and Nursing Care Center.