U.S. companies’ capital spending
plans are holding up, and mostly exceeding Wall Street forecasts, in the face
of policy concerns created by arguments in Washington over the fiscal cliff,
the debt ceiling and now automatic spending cuts.
Their willingness to spend on new
offices, plants and machinery, as well as a pickup in deal making, shows that
they are starting to dig into the massive amounts of cash that has been
collecting more dust than interest on their balance sheets. That could prove a
welcome counterpunch to a softer outlook for spending by consumers and
government.Meanwhile, not all the money will be spent on new projects, of course. And the spending plans announced so far are only slightly above last year's average. But they comfortably exceed the expectations of analysts, whose capex forecasts fell this year.
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