The economic recovery

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Well, the record stock market isn't so surprising:

• - Record profits
• - Record corporate cash positions
• - Record share buy-backs
• - Record low interest rates

However, most of it is bottom line growth, not topline growth. For that, we need business investment to pick up, but there could be a bit of a problem there:

And the US economy becomes ever less capital intensive due to the ongoing shift from manufacturing to services, bigger parts of it become like Wal-Mart. Fairly low tech, not growing much (if at all), hugely profitable, but mostly at the expense of squeezing cost and wages, and shifting much of the proceeds to shareholders. And, most importantly, this way is locking the economy in a low growth equilibrium.

The Wal-Mart Economy [Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.] - Seeking Alpha