Tao Francis

speaker

430 appearances 7 recordings 1 series first heard Nov 2017 last heard Nov 2022

Tao Francis’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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WSJ Your Money Briefing · Strong Economy Spurs More Selling, Spending · 7 Nov 2017 podcast

And, of course, that's ultimately what drives corporate sales. matched

Another factor is that you're seeing more in the way of business spending. matched

And that's always a big question mark and has been a big question mark for the last few years is just how much businesses are willing to invest and reinvest in the business. matched

Of course, if it looks like growth is going to be slow or non-existent, businesses are much less willing to commit profits and revenues to expanding. matched

When things look better, they're much more willing to. matched

So it's a little bit of a virtuous cycle there. matched

And you're starting to see more of that. matched

That's right. matched

The last few years have really seen sluggish growth. matched

I think even though it's been an expansion since the Great Recession and one of the longer expansions in history, in recent history, it hasn't been really robust or vibrant expansion. matched

So matched

There's some hope that that will pick up, and there certainly seem to be some signs that we're there. matched

Well, so paradoxically, even as you're getting this increase in sales, which is really a faster rate of growth for sales than we've seen in a number of years, some of the same factors are matched

increasing costs for companies. matched

So you're starting to see some increase in labor costs, which may not be as big a deal for companies as it might be, but it's still increasing what they have to spend to generate those profits. matched

We are also seeing energy prices go up. matched

You're at about $60 a barrel on the global market for oil, a little lower in the U.S. matched

because inventories seem to be high. matched

But nonetheless, that's higher energy costs than we have been seeing or than we were seeing not too long ago. matched

Similarly, a lot of commodity prices matched

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