From Barron’s Stephanie Pomboy: A Grim Outlook for the Economy, Stocks by Leslie Norton

What’s caused this growth in inventories?

It isn’t because companies ramped up production. Companies aren’t using cheap capital to increase production and capital expenditures, but are lavishing money on shareholders instead. They bought the lie that consumer spending would turn up any moment, and produced at the same pace. Now they find themselves with a monster inventory overhang. Inventory-to-sales ratios across a variety of industries—manufacturing, machinery, autos, wholesale—are at the highest level since 2009. In prior inventory liquidation cycles, nominal GDP growth is cut in half during the liquidation phase. As for profits, we’re starting with five negative quarters and we haven’t even begun the inventory liquidation cycle. So the second half will be a real eye-opener.

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