Largest Tennessee Companies Most Recent Three Quarters 2019 Combined Pretax Income Declines By a Huge 35% From the Comparable 2018 Prior Period. All Three Most Recent 2019 Quarters Had Total Pretax Income Declines. Bernie Sanders Frequently and Loudly Asserts That Corporate Profits Are At Record Highs. He's Incorrect, Especially in the Case of Tennessee. Bernie's Not Exactly a Financial Whiz.

There are 8 Tennessee Companies with stock market caps above $10 bil recently.

From a review of SEC filings, below are the Gold-Standard US GAAP Pretax Income (Loss) From Continuing Operations for the 8 largest Tennessee Companies in the December Quarter, the September Quarter and the June Quarter of both 2019 and 2018.

		US	US			US	US			US	US
		GAAP	GAAP			GAAP	GAAP			GAAP	GAAP
		Pretax	Pretax			Pretax	Pretax			Pretax	Pretax
		Income	Income			Income	Income			Income	Income
		(Loss)	(Loss)			(Loss)	(Loss)			(Loss)	(Loss)
		Dec	Dec			Sept	Sept			June	June
Tennessee Largest Companies	Tennessee	Quarter	Quarter			Quarter	Quarter			Quarter	Quarter
Market Caps Above $10 Bil	City HQs	2019	2018			2019	2018			2019	2018
		mils $	mils $			mils $	mils $			mils $	mils $
HCA Healthcare	Nashville	1,607	1,489			979	1,069			1,198	1,238
FedEx	Memphis	572	1,177			996	1,101			(2,554)	1,358
Dollar General	Goodlettsville	467	418			553	519			486	465
Autozone	Memphis	456	449			720	537			504	504
International Paper	Memphis	429	461			479	645			414	560
Mid America Apartment Communities	Germantown	155	64			83	55			64	62
Tractor Supply	Brentwood	186	176			157	149			282	268
Eastman Chemical	Kingsport	9	71			313	459			316	430
Totals all 12 Tennessee Companies		3,881	4,305			4,280	4,534			710	4,885
….. % Change From Prior Year Qtr		-10%				-6%				-85%
Three Quarters Total Pretax Income
….. 2019		8,871
….. 2018		13,724
………. % Decline		-35%

Such horrible earnings signal unhealthy future pay raises for the many already underpaid Tennessee non-executive employees.

Tennessee Company non-executive workers really have had the deck stacked against them for decades versus what is going on with the sky-high annual percentage pay and employee benefit raises of their Companies' Top-Tier Executives.

So which 2020 Democratic Presidential candidate could best help close this massive annual percentage pay raise gap between Tennessee Company Top-Tier executives and their already massively underpaid, hardworking Tennessee non-executive employees?

More than anything needed to solve this thorny problem is to possess exceptionally strong financial and data science skills, coupled with a keen understanding of how businesses operate.  And you also must have a high degree of  economic fairness. 

Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar all have little if any financial acumen, no data science understanding and little if any understanding of how businesses operate.

Further, all four of them worked for the US Government, particularly in the past ten years, when these comparative pay raise results of Top-Tier Executives and non-executive employees were so horrendous, not just in Tennessee but also in every other US State.  

On the positive side, all four of them have a high degree of economic fairness.

Michael Bloomberg has both the financial acumen and the understanding of how businesses operate.  

But he has no data science expertise. 

Also and most important of all, Bloomberg has a low degree of economic fairness.  In the many years he was accumulating his wealth of $60+ bil, US income inequality expanded dramatically in each year by leaps and bounds.  So, like many US business tycoons with their sole fixation on maximization of Company profits, Bloomberg accumulated his massive wealth on the backs of the declining US middle class and the growing number of people dropped to the lower economic class.  And by his punitively racial "Stop and Frisk" policy, many New York City people of color were physically thrown against the wall.

And while he was accumulating his massive amount of wealth, Bloomberg was against unions.

I think there is only one Democratic Presidential candidate who has the requisite financial acumen, data science skills, understanding of how business operate and economic fairness to help turn the tide around on this massive, continuing US income inequality expansion caused mainly by the massive gap in annual percentage pay raises between executive and non-executive employees  ..... Pete Buttigieg.