The Big Four of corporate greed are experiencing hard times. (world's smallest violin playing).

I see this as The Revenge of Trickle Down (a.k.a. Trickle Up). American consumers are not buying their cheap crap and poison, not because there is no demand, but because Americans have no money. The 1% has sucked the well dry.

Amazon



Amazon posted its third quarter earnings results today and they were not pretty: the company said it had a operating loss of $544 million, more than twenty times what was lost for the same period in 2013. Its revenues grew to $20.84 billion, an increase of 20 percent over the same period last year, but less than what investors were expecting. In its projections for next quarter, Amazon said it expects the red ink to keep spreading, with losses growing to $570 million.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. WMT +0.17% cut its earnings guidance for the year after it posted its seventh straight quarterly decline in U.S. store traffic and said growth in online sales would slow. It cited sluggish consumer spending and higher costs associated with building new smaller-format stores, increased health-care expenses, and greater investments in its e-commerce operations.

Fast food behemoth McDonald’s is struggling to remain relevant. It reported a larger-than-expected drop in profits Tuesday morning. Net income for the third quarter fell 30% to $1.07 billion ($1.09 per share) from $1.52 billion ($1.52 per share) a year ago.