- by New Deal democrat
At first blush yesterday's negative industrial production print gives the lie to the proposition that the economy has left last year's "shallow industrial recession" behind, as it looks to be going mainly sideways:
But a closer examination shows that is not the case. Industrial production is broken up into three groupings: manufacturing (by far the biggest), utilities, and mining (including oil and gas).
So here is the information for manufacturing (blue. left scale) and mining (red, right scale):
Although the trend is modest, manufacturing has broken out to new highs. And the energy patch is clearly seeing a rebound.
Which means that the *entire* reason for the decline is utilities:
Note this graph is seasonally adjusted. But whenever most of the country has an unusually warm winter -- as is the case this year -- it shows up as a decline in energy (i.e., heat) production.
So you can blame the downturn in industrial production on the Great Global Warming Hoax.
