>A question: when US corps talk about profits, how much (if any) is due to
>current stock market bubble? Are returns or expected returns from equity
>counted in this arithmetic? I'm not doubting that profits have gone up, but
>I'm wondering how much is due to financial returns, how much from
>productivity growth (value added/ hour) in manufacturing.
Some share of profits come from the bubble, no doubt, but the numbers I used were for nonfinancial corporations. Expected returns don't count - just profits "earned" in the quarter or year under consideration. These profits are adjusted for what the Bureau of Economic Analysis considers overly generous depreciation allowances for tax purposes.
Doug