- by New Deal democrat
This morning Industrial production was reported up 0.5%, as was capacity utilization.
For 4 months I have been highlighting the surge in Leading Economic Indicators. As of this morning, 3 of the 5 known metrics relied upon to date the end of recessions -- real retail sales, aggregate hours worked, and industrial production -- all have stopped declining, and two have affirmatively turned back up.
The remaining two are nonfarm payrolls, which if current trend continues, will turn up in 2-4 months, and wages which remain a real and structural problem.
In summary, the recession has bottomed, but we can't say any meaningful "recovery" has yet begun.
Capital goods orders looking better
57 seconds ago
1 comment:
This is about the only good piece of economic news recently that wasn’t fabricated by the Government. For those following other industrial measures this increase though small is sound. Industrial output should as stated continue to slowly increase or at least hold its own. The salient point was the 13% drop year over year. This coincides with the 10% personal spending drop YOY. An examination of personal spending for the past few months yield’s a flat line 10% below the two year ago trend. At least for now we can look forward to simply a reduced economy 10% down from two years ago with high unemployment and wage stagnation. This is the bright side. Some help may be in the offing from exports as other economies, not burdened by a trillion dollar per year Military Empire to support and a Wall Street to feed, rebound and grow. Jobs will continue to be lost, hopefully at a reduced pace and home prices will fall a little further. Some big negatives are a collapsing commercial real estate market, more bank failures, toxic assets that remain on the books of large institutions and of course a Government that is so insolvent that a failed bank looks like a mountain of gold.
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