Friday, February 1, 2013
A quick note about the ISM manufacturing report
. - by New Deal democrat
As you can probably tell from my recent posts, I am in a quandary as to whether the increase in payroll taxes plus other government austerity measures are enough to put this country into an actual recession. If anything, my outlook is getting gloomier.
The shame is that, left to itself, it looks like the economy wants to keep growing. Today's ISM manufacturing report of 53.4 is very potent evidence of that. The index has been reported since 1948. Since that time, only once - for the first six months or so of the 1973-74 recession - has the index ever recorded a reading above 53 during a recession.
Interestingly, or ominously, that recession occurred when a strongly growing US economy ran into the brick wall of the Arab oil embargo. So if a recession is starting, you can blame it squarely on ridiculous contractionary austerity coming from Washington, DC.
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2 comments:
I agree with your above points on the austerity from Washington causing this recession. Reminds me, last year my next door neighbor was about to lose his house because he stopped making payments (long story)...his brother had been giving him money to help meet the mounting pressure from the banks but he ran out of money too. Neighbor lost his house...it was his brother's fault.
I've been down on stuff for a long time, but I fundamentally agree with you. I think that we did actually manage to catch enough of an updraft to build its own strength, albeit sorta weakly at first. But I can't see how the losses to government spending -- and what the austerity types don't ever seem to grok is that that's also jobs and wages, heaps of both, directly and not -- can be overcome by what I'm seeing.
Add oil to that -- living expenses broadly, really, food has gotten friggin' nasty, anecdotally (but seriously, bread? Milk? Holy %(*$) -- and I don't see where we get the momentum.
Dunno. I live very much in a gubmint town, employment-base-wise, so maybe that skews my view. I know I'm supposed to be excited about "renewal" construction projects that I do not understand, involving huge numbers of shiny new units coming in neighborhoods still full of boarded up stuff.
I think it'll come down to the state and city governments, honestly. If they can catch some momentum and start to spend some again, maybe the national picture will improve despite the austerity from the federal. I mean, state workers here at least aren't being asked to bring their own _printer paper_ anymore, that's something.
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