Watch Industrial Production for Economic improvement.

Watch Industrial Production for Economic improvement.


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Here are the stats for the past year. The economy has been plunging like the Titanic towards the bottom. When we see that plunge go to zero or better two months running, THEN we will have a Green Shoot. Right now we are in a hell of a lot of trouble.

INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTION
MAY -1.1%
APR -0.7%
MAR -1.7%
FEB -1.5%
JAN -1.9%
DEC -2.4%
NOV -1.3
OCT +1.5%
SEP -2.8%
AUG -1.1%
JUL +0.1%

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Oh Boy! What a horrible mess our economy is in. Fat cat bankers have been ruining everything with their self serving greed. That is akin to raping the country and so far nobody is doing anything about putting a stop to it. It is time to wake up America and put all of the crooks in prison where they belong.

I've gotten heavily short the market the last several days, so here's hoping for disaster!

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at this point i have shifted my portfolio for what it think will be a shaky earning season. i think the market wants to see signs of improvement instead of seeing things as less bad. i don't think we are there yet. but im also ready to make moves if im wrong.

Remember the stimulus bill hasn't really kicked in yet. The rebuilding of infrastructure alone will give industrial production a solid boost but it won't reflect on the market for a few more quarters.

the stimulus is moving very slowly. imo too slow.

It's always been a downside of Keynesian economics...the lag of government recognition and stimulus legislation.

Where can I find an introductory explanation of what the numbers Neubarth posts actually mean?

Yeah, I confess I'm lost in the weeds on this post, too.

Not a clue what that means.

I'm not sure where Neubarth took his numbers from, since he never uses the original source, but the numbers originally are from the Federal Reserve Board's report on Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization Explanation of what they are and how they are calculated can be found by following the link for "documentation" at the top, and then follow the link to summary of methods. Basically, the index is a measure of change in how much is produced. Currently the index uses 2002 as its base, so the May index number of 95.8 means that US industry is producing approx 95.8% of what it did 7 years ago. Which is not good. What's actually more disturbing is the measure of Capacity Utilization. This measures how much factories are making versus sustainable maximum output (realistic shifts and downtime etc) and right now, it's the lowest ever (well, since 1969 when the series started) at 68.3% compared, to the previous low of 70.9% in 1982.

Agreed ..
If zero remains for a quarter, it's so good.
And if it turns positive and keep going with the same momentum for 2 quarters, crisis can be very much fixed. ..

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- All of my words uttered due to my observations/thoughts ..

Already the number of layoffs in the Industrial Production jobs far exceeds the number of jobs that Obama's stimulus plan will create. All I can see the stimulus plan doing once it gets into gear is slow down the frightening rate of collapse.

Quite frankly, we are in urgent need of a valid new stimulus plan.

More important we need to get inner city people to work. Unemployment in Oakland is nearing 30%. This is going to be a hot summer, and past experience has shown us that riots in minority populated inner cities occur when the heat is up and the jobs are gone.

Oakland is going to burn later this summer if we do not take urgent action. Obama's actions so far appear to be TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE.

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Oh Boy! What a horrible mess our economy is in. Fat cat bankers have been ruining everything with their self serving greed. That is akin to raping the country and so far nobody is doing anything about putting a stop to it. It is time to wake up America and put all of the crooks in prison where they belong.