^ Not necessarily easy to do at a quick glance but if you randomly look at financial reports for different companies you can hit and miss here and there.
I find I listen to people around me and read a lot of news and then follow-up on companies I am hearing/seeing a lot about (to get my own verified facts versus rumours or poor reporting).
And of course whatever you find you have to reconcile against the reality of a specific company. Like $1B in cash for one smaller company is waaaaay different than it is for another much bigger one. And a lot of solid debt at one company may be better/worse than a lot of 'liabilities' at another similar sized one depending on the details behind each scenario.
AS an aside to that, here is a report from the UN labour office:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081020/...financial_jobs
U.N. agency says crisis to cost 20 million jobs
Quote:
It was alarming that global unemployment had stayed at the same levels despite the strong economic growth seen between 2002 and 2007, said Somavia, who files to New York this week for talks with the heads of all U.N. agencies, chaired by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
He said resources should be pumped into the economy to stave off or mitigate recession, concentrating on employment-intensive sectors including small enterprises. The financial sector should also be steered back to its fundamental function of lending to entrepreneurs, according to the Chilean lawyer and diplomat.
Somavia said the financial sector's share in the profits of U.S. companies had risen to 41 percent last year from 5 percent in 1980. As a result, banks preferred to invest in financial transactions rather than lending to other productive sectors.
"So this system began to siphon off resources from the real economy process," he said.
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It seems that an argument could be made that any part of the additional financial services sector's 36% of above-historical-average economic weighting that does not add true value to the economy will have to disappear before a true bottom can be hit in that sector.
The upside of forcing that reversion, versus covering it up and letting it build up again, is that real companies that add real value may be better positioned to thrive again long term?
Or maybe financial services merely for the sake of perpetuating yet more layers of financial services/schemes are totally valid value adders to the real world? (Worthy of its own debate I am sure)
Claeren.