THE VIEW FROM THE TOP.(chief financial officers are more optimistic about US economy than chief executive officers)

Publication: The New Yorker

Publication Date: 23-DEC-02

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COPYRIGHT 2002 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.

In the perfect world of economic theory, corporations are impersonal machines, adjusting supply quickly in response to demand. In the real world, though, corporations are fickle institutions, run by individuals who are prone to bouts of giddiness and fear. Despite some evidence indicating otherwise, C.E.O.s are people, too.

Consider two contrary interpretations of the country's economy. The first comes from a recent survey, conducted by Fleet Capital, of six hundred and seventy-three chief financial officers at midsized manufacturing companies across the United States. (Midsized means that these companies have sales of between twenty-five million and a billion dollars.) Manufacturing was hit especially hard by last year's recession, and has been stagnant for most of this year. But the C.F.O.s said that they were upbeat about their own companies' prospects, confident that the economy will grow briskly next year, and convinced that...

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