"Big business bellwether misses forecast, cites credit crunch."

I was told the pressure on GE divisional CEOs was incredible this winter. After a long period of relatively easy growth they were faced with a downturn, and many of them had never experienced harder times. GE could see it coming and they were told to ship everything they could to get it on the books right away.

A friend is a financial guy for one of the extremely profitable divisions of GE, not the CFO but more of an aide to the CEO, advising on profits and strategy. I visited with him about a little less than a month ago. It was the end of their quarter, and while incredibly high their division profit was down. Was due to a recall and decrease in demand.

The recall was over a product which could be used in LNG plants. The failure rate of their product was 1 in 5,000 over a set period. Even though they aren't critical they couldn't be used. The downturn in demand was due to less capital investment.

And his CEO has never had to face the issue of lower numbers for a quarter. I hadn't thought of that.

Arf