Chart Of The Day: Global Sales Growth Slows To A Crawl

Gone are the confident and carefree pre-2007 days, and I don’t see them coming back under "any administration" for a long time since we have a foreclosure crisis and stagnating incomes to worry about. Both of these predate the current administration by many years.

highdesertcat: So get Palin or Bachmann into office and then we'll all be flush with energy and cash? Good times forever and ever, amen?

@stickmaster I wouldn't vote for Palin, Bachmann or any of the candidates currently in the field of hopefuls. But I'd vote for Rick Perry if he decides to get off the pot. What Perry has done and continues to do for Texas, is excellent! But, let's not talk politics on a car board because when it comes time to vote our conscience we have to each decide for ourselves if we are better off with Obama than we were under Shrub or Clinton. If you are better off with Obama than under Shrub or Clinton then you should vote to keep Obama on for another four years. I am old enough to remember the one-term Jimmy Carter. Those old enough can easily remember why Carter was never re-elected to a second term. In comparison, things are even worse for more people in America under Obama. And how well we, the people, are doing directly affects the economy and sales of cars and new homes.

@mike978 Mike, that pretty well sums it up. You expressed it more succinctly and harshly than I chose to, but also much more realistically. For those who have not experienced the care-free pre-2007 days of anything goes, they won't know what they are missing. But for people like me who enjoyed pretty darn good times prior to the Great Recession this is quite a let-down. No finger-pointing please since there is plenty of blame to go around. That explains why people in business are so cautious with their money and have cut back on so much, including employment. Maybe everyone is waiting for the other shoe to drop. It may happen later this year or next. Something's gotta give. And I don't see Obama's smiling face on TV trying to instill confidence in the populace. What seems to come through loud and clear is that the only job Obama cares about, is keeping the one he's got. Not much comfort to all the people on the verge of having their homes foreclosed upon or their car repossessed.

@stickmaster After decades of morons in your whitehouse why get rid of the only one whoe IQ exceeds his shoe size

@mikey: Totally OT, but, nice icon!

Mikey, I don't know about that. A friend in his seventies recently bought a new 2011 Mercedes E350 AWD sedan to replace his '96 Crown Vic. Guy across the street at 83 recently traded both his Cadillacs for a 2011 Buick Enclave AWD. A retired AF Colonel in his late seventies bought a 2011 Lexus LS460 just a few weeks ago. The bottom line is that you can't take it with you and I have never seen a hearse with a U-Haul behind it. If you got it, why not spend it? Life's a bitch. It's Hell after that.

Could be worse. Instead of being a retired boomer couple you could be a millenial couple with kids and a mortgage. :)

Mikey, I don't know...I saw a nice, victory red Impala during my lunch walk and the feelings for a new car were stirred. I came to my senses, though, as I plan on keeping my current Impala another three years. I'm 60, and time will tell. Never say never!

@highdesertcat No..highdesertcat, even if I have it, I'll spend it on something else. New cars have lost thier thrill for me.

@geozinger Thanks geo...It only took me 2 years to figure out how to create it.

@psar...been there..done that. @Zackman....I'm three years younger,and hope to keep my Impala untill I'm 70.

@mikey: No worries. I should change mine to our G6. But I am still in love with Javelins. Ever since childhood. I just want mine equipped with an LSx motor. ;)

@highdesertcat mikey, that seems to be the trend for YOUNGER people, especially in Asia. In the US the younger people still strive to buy that new car, but in most markets in tends to be a foreign brand, imported or made on American soil. I'm surprised that someone of your vintage has lost interest in cars. People of my generation grew up with cars, and rock&roll, and I cannot ever envision the day that the sound of a Big Block doesn't make my heart pound, even if that Big Block is in the process of destroying itself on the drag strip. Yeah, been there, done that, with 426 Hemis on Nitro (I was the mechanic, not the driver).

@psarhjinian psar, our kids are going through that now, and it ain't pretty.

Well, I do work at a company that is part of a rather huge international cooperation that has it name from early luxury-car-production. We were faced at a meeting, with a 'fall in expected increase of net-profit' of nearly 6%. In effect, our net-profit was increasing 6% less than the economists had calculated that it would increase. How anyone can think that way still baffles me years later. I blame it on greedy stock owners. They actually believe everything can grow forever.

@Zykotec You need to realise most economists are too stupid to tie their own shoe laces they can prdict anything they like reality is different

Zykotec, if you have any sort of retirement account or mutual funds or anything like that you are most likely a greedy stock owner. And yeah you buy a stock expecting it to go up. Why else would you buy it? Or would you buy stocks expecting them to go down? What are you thinking? If I had known that you were out there looking for stocks that had gone down, hey I had some that I would have sold you at my cost in a heartbeat.

@Zykotec One might buy stocks in the hope that they will simply hold their value and remain stable sources of future income. The presumption that a stock must continuously grow to be healthy seems highly problematic. Unchecked growth can sometimes become cancerous, and hence maladaptive and disadvantageous in the long run.

Come on Phil, I know you don't like me or agree with me on anything, but admit that greedy stock owners expecting stocks to always go up is less than bright and you demean yourself by attempting to defend one of yours.

@Zykotec Used to be that you bought stocks for the dividends. Once growing the share price uber alles becomes the goal (as it was at GM under Fred Donner and his successors in the late 60s/70s), you're going to run the company into the ground eventually.

@MikeAR I almost agree that many people buy stocks just because they expect them to grow, but they still get a share of the income of the company they are part owners of. The big problem is when a stock holder expects their stock to rise by 10% each year, and when it only goes up 8% they call the 'missing' 2% a loss. Even worse, they may sell their shares cheap because they are unhappy , making it go down instead, creating the illusion that the company is loosing money, regardless of how production is going. And yes, my retirement fund actually makes me a stock owner, allthough not a greedy one . Retirement for me will hopefully consist of tinkering with Hot Rods in my garage, with a slight chance of an extra income. (not sure what kind of hot rods will be popular 40 years from now...I may be putting extra condensators in the boost-reserve-control of some EV...)

@Zykotec I haven't seen a figure lately but the average dividend yield on the relatively small percentage of stocks that offer dividends is less than the rate of inflation. If you buy for dividends under those conditions you are losing money. Don't use dividends as an example, most stocks don't offer dividends so what's a non-greedy stock owner to do? You can't defend that, it was an ill-chosen phrase.

@MikeAR It's good to know you aren't greedy but your problem is not with the average investor, it's with the high frequency traders who get in and out of stocks in seconds. You or I can't do that but we pay the price for missed earnings and problems like that while the HFTs make tons of money. They aren't investors, they're traders.