On March 12, 2014 the March Duke/CFO Magazine Global Business Outlook Survey (pdf) was released. It contains a variety of statistics regarding how CFOs view business and economic conditions.
In this CFO Survey, I found the following to be the most notable excerpts:
Increasing the minimum wage nationwide to $10 per hour would lead to substantial job losses among retail, service and manufacturing firms, according to U.S. chief financial officers.
also:
“We know from past surveys that many firms can fund expansion based on internal profits,” said David W. Owens, director of research at CFO Publishing. “Among companies that need to borrow, most say that a modest increase in interest rates would not deter them from borrowing to fund investment. In fact, respondents this quarter indicate that interest rates would have to rise by 3 percentage points before their plans would be significantly crimped.”
The CFO survey contains the Optimism Index chart, showing U.S. Optimism (with regard to the economy) at 60, as seen below:
(click on image to enlarge)
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It should be interesting to see how well the CFOs predict business and economic conditions going forward. I discussed various aspects of this, and the importance of these predictions, in the July 9, 2010 post titled “The Business Environment”.
(past posts on CEO and CFO Surveys can be found under the “CFO and CEO Confidence” tag)
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I post various economic forecasts because I believe they should be carefully monitored. However, as those familiar with this blog are aware, I do not necessarily agree with many of the consensus estimates and much of the commentary in these forecast surveys.
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The Special Note summarizes my overall thoughts about our economic situation
SPX at 1863.94 as this post is written