Big U.S. companies announce massive job cuts

[sweeps]

A slew of American heavyweight companies, including Caterpillar, Pfizer, Sprint Nextel, Home Depot and General Motors, announced thousands of job cuts Monday.

MSNBC article

[disneysteve]

At the same time Pfizer is cutting jobs, they also announced a bid to take over Wyeth. How can you not afford to keep the workers you have but you can afford to buy another huge company?

[red92s]

. . . all in the name of showing year-over-year profit increases so Wall Street analysts don't downgrade your stock. American workers sort of burn the candle on both ends by being heavily invested in private companies (through 401(K)'s) and fueling the fire that requires constant improvement in profits and margins, and then being subject to the fall out when someone (gasp) fails to meet sometimes unrealistic projections.


Also, wouldn't the many, many, many billions in infrastructure investment on the near horizon constitute a windfall of sorts for Cat? Is there enough idle equipment elsewhere that we can rebuild all our bridges and roads without ramping up Cat facilities? Were they that over-saturated with employees?