Re: surge in U.S. corporate profits

From: Paul Cockshott (clyder@GN.APC.ORG)
Date: Thu May 20 2004 - 16:09:04 EDT


On Thursday 20 May 2004 03:28, Allin Cottrell wrote:
> Sorry if this has been discussed and I missed it, but I'm wondering if
> anyone has an analysis of the recent surge in corporate profit in the
> USA.
>
> Here are the first-quarter figures for the last few years (choice of
> quarter makes little difference), plus the latest few observations,
> for the variable cpatax ("Corporate Profits After Tax with Inventory
> Valuation Adjustment and Capital Consumption Adjustment, Billion $,
> seasonally adjusted at annual rate") as available from the St Louis
> Fed:
>
> 1999:1         593.2
> 2000:1         551.8
> 2001:1         536.7
> 2002:1         698.6
> 2003:1         713.2
> 2003:2         811.3
> 2003:3         893.7
> 2003:4         961.9
>
Is there any way of looking at something equivalent to the bank of
england financial statistics for the USA to get some kind of Kaleckian
handle on why this has happened?
> The 2003:4 figure stands 50% (!) above the previous peak (before a
> downturn at the end of the '90s), of 641.5 in 1997:3.
>
> --
> Allin Cottrell
> Department of Economics
> Wake Forest University, NC


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