Inside the Corporate Spending Gap

What do companies do when profits sag? They often put off major capital expenditures -- but that can set off a vicious cycle, with weaker capex possibly generating weaker earnings, and so on, and so on, and so on.

Average capex is expected to decline this year for the industrial and energy sectors, according to a survey of Bloomberg data and other analysts' estimates for large U.S. companies. That's bad news for two sectors that typically depend heavily on new plant and equipment upgrades -- industrials and energy.