The chart below demonstrates two things: i) the revenue decline in the current quarter indicates no inflection point in revenue pick up, and ii) expectations are for a V-shaped recovery in revenue.

So the logical question is where will all this revenue come from? With massive excess capacity overflowing in the economy, pundits point to inventories, which will be "restocked" in order to increase sales for all these lean and mean companies that continue laying off workers even as the recession progresses. In other words, capex spending should already be picking up, as that is the primary driver of revenue increases down the line: indeed, a simple fact nobody likes to talk about. We shall get back to that in a second.

The other notable fact is that companies which have for the most part shut down the dividend spigot, and are virtually not paying any corporate taxes anymore (hey, if Goldman can get away with it, everyone will be pocketing those NOLs compliments of a horrendous 2008 for a long, long time). So cash should be higher? Presumably. And that cash should be going to paying for capex. At least that is the thinking if one wants to be bullish on revenue increases.

Zero Hedge decided to analyze quaterly revenue and capex trends among S&P 500 companies over the past year, and we also threw in a study of total and net debt, just to get a sense of what the capitalization of these "poised for a recovery" companies looks like.

Here are the results:

Not only has CapEx not been increasing, it continues plunging: both YoY and sequentially. In fact, S&P CapEx likely at maintenance levels on a revenue/capex basis: not one company is interested in investing in revenue growth projects. Which makes sense: if you have a horde of cash and no clue what your access to debt will be like, any IRR on new CapEx projects can be thrown out of the window before it is even started.