Whirlpool to Drain 5,000 Jobs
The contraction continues: Michigan-based appliance-maker Whirlpool said today that it will slash about 7 percent of its global workforce by the end of next year, thanks to the ongoing credit crisis and an expected decline in demand for big-ticket items.
Cash-strapped homeowners are deciding to nurse their veteran washing machines and fridges through another year, it seems.
"Declining home values, rising unemployment and very low consumer confidence levels will likely prolong a negative demand environment at least through the middle of 2009," Whirlpool chairman Jeff M. Fettig said in a release.
The news came during the company's third-quarter earnings report today, which showed a 7 percent decline in profits compared to the same period last year.
Whirlpool bought Maytag in 2006 for $1.8 billion.
The news sent shares of Whirlpool down 18 percent in late-morning trading.
-- Frank Ahrens
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Frank Ahrens
|
October 28, 2008; 11:33 AM ET
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Posted by: moonpenn | October 28, 2008 12:03 PM | Report abuse
Whirlpool is laying off people right according to Economics 101 based predictions of recessionary trends. Of course like major home appliances, automobiles are in the same category during "contractions due to recession".
Caterpiller Corporation is another interesting Case Study.
Caterpiller's "entrenchment" program started last year. Caterpillar's plan was to market overseas expecting stagflation or recession on a domestic level. Will be interesting to see if Caterpiller Corporation adjusts profit forecasts to encompass a globally spreading recession, stay tuned.
Maybe Warren the Buffet man is looking at corporations who have entrenched to date showing that these corporations are in touch with economic realities and not Voodoo Economics.
Posted by: truthhurts | October 28, 2008 1:02 PM | Report abuse
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I checked out your Twitter. You might want to start a cloud
Growth chart:
http://futurechaos.wordpress.com/cloud-chart/
"Production Rhino is built on carrier-grade fault-tolerant infrastructure that provides continuous availability, service logic execution and on-line management even during network outages, hardware failure, software failure and maintenance operations." https://developer.opencloud.com/devportal/display/OCDEV/Rhino+2.0
The way things are going, I'm expecting network outages and hardware/software failures are always a possibility. Good luck.