going global

Lately I have been hearing whisperings from the business news media with respect to the idea that the global economy might be slowing. We've all heard the ongoing chatter about the U.S. economy slowing, and whether or not it is going into recession, but now the talk seems to be drifting to global themes. Perhaps the U.S. economy trouble will cause the global economy to slow. I'm not sure what will happen, but I'm pretty sure someone forgot to tell heavy equipment maker Caterpillar (CAT), and conglomerate General Electric (GE). Both of these enormous global companies announced earnings recently and these were the results and forecasts...

GE - profit up 15%, 2008 earnings projected to rise at least 10%
CAT - profit up 11%, 2008 earnings projected to rise 5% - 15%

It is interesting to see that for the first time GE's revenue scales tipped to international, accounting for more than domestic dollars did. Also CAT explained that booming overseas demand made up for slowing U.S. sales. These two companies are really taking advantage of global growth to keep the earnings growth chugging along despite U.S. weakness. There are probably countless other examples, (Honeywell (HON) & Schlumberger (SLB) being two) of companies where this compensation is occurring, and we should see more to come as earnings come in.