| Kimberly-Clark Announces Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2007 Results
DALLAS, Jan. 24 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Kimberly-Clark Corporation (NYSE: KMB) today reported that net sales in the fourth quarter of 2007 improved 10.5 percent to $4.8 billion, setting a new quarterly record. Highlights included continued strong growth in developing and emerging markets, where sales climbed in excess of 20 percent, and double-digit volume gains for several of the company's well-known Personal Care brands in North America. Overall, organic sales growth totaled approximately 6 percent, driven principally by higher sales volumes, while changes in currency exchange rates also benefited sales by nearly 5 percent. Diluted net income per share was $1.07 compared with $1.05 in the prior year. Adjusted earnings in the fourth quarter of 2007 were $1.11 per share, up nearly 8 percent from $1.03 per share in 2006 and in line with the company's previous guidance range of $1.09 to $1.11 per share.
The failure of neo-liberalism
More and more, it appears that in the 21st century we are returning to the economics of the 19th, where wealth was overwhelmingly concentrated in the hands of a few owners and astute speculators. Neither the Right nor the Left seem capable of creating a society in which all benefit from increased prosperity and economic security. Right-wing claims that free markets will enrich all sections of society are palpably false, while the traditional European welfare state appears to penalize innovation and wealth-creation, thereby locking the poor and unskilled into institutionalized poverty and unemployment. Thus in the new age of globalization, both ideologies create the same phenomenon: an underclass caught between welfare and low wages, a heavily indebted middle class increasingly subject to job and pension insecurity and a new class of the super rich who escape all rules of taxation and community.
Our view: All-Democrat Statehouse short on results
Single-party control of the Statehouse is no guarantee of future performance.
Like those who sell stocks and bonds, Massachusetts Democrats might want to attach that warning to future campaign commercials. For despite all the talk from the Deval Patrick side prior to the 2006 election about how having a Republican governor and Democratic Legislature was bad for business on Beacon Hill, the results in the session just ended was simply more of the same.
There were some minor initiatives that managed to make it from committee to floor vote, to the governor's desk. But nothing like the measure mandating universal coverage that former Republican Governor Mitt Romney put together, in collaboration with the Democratic Senate president and House speaker, and signed into law in April of 2006.
Rodriguez's agent: Coach will have no comment
Rodriguez's agent responds to document-shredding allegations..... Wow, this points the finger back at WVU. I hope WVU has an accounting course maybe their school officials can take it. If what RR's lawyer stated is true WVU is in pretty sad shape......GO Blue....I can't wait till next season.. .
Tuesday's rumours
The Special Juande doesn't really fancy him anymore and he'll have to suffer the humiliation of battling with Carlton Cole for a first-team place at West Ham. That little deal will get Spurs £6m which they'll immediately spend on Alan Hutton of Rangers right-backing fame. Carson Yeung has decided he doesn't fancy the humiliation of owning Birmingham City and that means the club are after a new suitor. Unsurprisingly, that turns out to be a fabulously rich Russian oil baron - in this case Vagit Alekperov, who is so rich his hair is made out of diamonds. Fact. And in other news: Derby will be taken over by cartoon botherer Roy Disney, the comic potential of which you'll no doubt be aware; £200,000 will make Luton midfielder Dave Edwards Nottingham Forest midfielder Dave Edwards; and QPR quite fancy a bit of Arsenal defender Matt Connolly, who is a bit too English for the Emirates.
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