Carla Javier

Consumers and investors see the maker of Pampers, Bounty, Charmin, Tampax, Dawn, and so much more as a litmus test, says Robert Mosco at TD Cowan.

The company's 2% growth in volume, Moscow says, is encouraging.

Take Tide laundry detergent as an example.

He says that's because the higher performance improves the value equation for potential customers.

Innovation matters, too, says Erin Lash at Morningstar.

It's about things that make a consumer's life easier or enhance it in some way, whether that's a smaller pack size, a larger pack size, something that's easier to open, a more favorable scent.

Lash says that's why the Tidemaker says it's still upping its investments in research and development and marketing, despite cost headwinds.

If you are a consumer that is really pinching pennies right now, you want to make sure that your clothes are getting clean each and every wash cycle and that they're not, you know, becoming tarnished.

Because a new wardrobe is expensive.

That all said, Katie Thomas at the Kearney Consumer Institute points out that budgets are really tight these days, pressured by rising prices of food, gas.

So product quality will only get companies so far.

It would have been too loud to record.

The USPS says it lost $9 billion last fiscal year.

That's Rick Geddes at Cornell.

On the cost side, he says USPS has a universal service obligation.

On the revenue side, lawyer and consultant Jim Campbell says letter volume has gone down precipitously, and legislation limits the Postal Service's ability to raise prices.

So a combination of the price cap and the declining volumes

hit the post office quite hard.

The Postmaster General said Congress and the USPS could consider reducing the days of delivery, closing offices in rural or remote areas, raising stamp prices to a dollar or more, or significant financial reforms.

But with revenues unlikely to exceed costs, James O'Rourke at Notre Dame says Congress has to decide if it wants a postal service at all.