Earnings season tepid so far

A quick missive: I have neither seen nor heard any amazing news this earnings season.  That is, nothing that would cause me to change my view that the economy is only escaping from the recession gradually.  Nothing that would cause me to be a stock market bull the way I was a year ago in March.

What I have seen is corporations doing an excellent job of expense management.  An okay job of generating new revenues.  Consumers still a bit shell-shocked, and most importantly, an unemployment rate that hangs over the financial markets like dark storm clouds.

I would like to hear businesses, besides the Apple iPad, talking about new and innovative products or new and innovative ways of doing business that might lead to actual real economic growth.  Unfortunately, much of the corporate “innovation” of the last decade took the form of: financial engineering.  Meaning that new and innovative financial products drove the mortgage market which drove everything.  You know the rest.

Jason