The swine flu is good?

In a little odd news this morning, Clorox posted a 23% jump in first quarter profit.  They attributed it to an increase in demand for its disinfectants related to the swine flu pandemic, as Diane calls it.  They didn't only beat analysts estimates, they beat their own estimates.  On another note, they expect earnings to be better this year off of a weaker dollar.

The weaker dollar issue has its good and bad issues.  A weaker dollar means that more people are buying U.S. goods, but it also means that we can't buy as much from overseas.  While the influx of foreign money is a good deal for our economy, it rarely is in the form of capital investment.  Capital investment is the kind of inflows we need to stabilize the economy.  Capital investment creates jobs from construction down to the janitors that clean the buildings after they are complete.  Capital investment can come in many forms.  One major capital investment that our country has from Japan are auto manufacturing plants.  While most of them have been here for a while now, the relative cheapness of the dollar to the yen was part of what started that trend.  So now, many foreign cars are made here- also partly due to the fact that the U.S. is the world's largest car market by a big margin.

Have a good week.  No tests!