Recent corporate profits came from cost cutting — laying off workers — and then selling off inventories to meet limited demand

SHOOT: Yep, you heard right. Companies made money by firing workers, and somehow everyone expected those fired workers to remain programmed to storm into Wal-Mart and buy cheese doodles and SUV accessories. Er...with what money? The dickheads working in Wall Street and for the major banks, the fellas, the whizzkids at Goldman and Morgan seem to have forgotten that while fantasy money exists in their world, where bonusses materialise out of thin air [no matter what's happening]in the real world, you can't conjure up money out of nothing. If you don't have a job, sorry, game over for you. Sign up at the nearest trailer park and start waiting for that vegetable garden [three potatoes tossed into a hole] to show signs of life. You can't conjure up a recovery by fiddling with a balance sheet.

clipped from www.msnbc.msn.com "The market has gotten way ahead of the reality on the ground,” Pimco's Mohamed El-Erian, co-chief executive officer of the largest bond fund manager in the world, told CNBC Friday. "We are yet to see a durable and sustainable recovery, but the market has gotten ahead of the process by pricing that in." On Monday, some investors echoed those second thoughts, sending stocks 2 percent lower and stalling a rally that had pushed the market up 15 percent since mid-July. Stock investors also have been encouraged by the latest round of quarterly corporate earnings reports, which came in stronger than expected. But a closer examination shows much of that profit came from cost cutting — laying off workers — and then selling off inventories to meet limited demand. That’s not a formula for long-term growth. For that, consumers need to get back to levels of spending not seen since the economy began contracting 18 months ago.