inflation

Manufacturing Monday: Week of 10.20.08

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Happy Monday, folks, I do hope you all had a good weekend!  Welcome to another installment of Manufacturing Monday!  Now things are looking bad out there, as many of you probably already know.  We start out with more dire jobs news at GM. Turning to some good news, it seems economic forces that made us "costly" has now turned the tables of sorts, with ironically the biggest pusher of China, Wal-mart (or is it Walmart?  I've seen this store both ways.) forcing suppliers to look domestically.  Lastly, we got Honda moving more work to North America. But first, as is par for the course, we get to the latest economic info related to manufacturing.  So without further adieu...

The Numbers!

Why the recession *should be* ending

No, I have not lost my mind, although with a slew of just awful economic data for September and October spilling out, the title of this blog entry is a contrarian statement to say the least. What I mean is, measured by the indicators of past recessions going back all the way through the Great Depression, the shallow recession that I believe started approximately last December, and primarily affected Wall Street with only a glancing blow at Main Street, ought to be ending.

The Consumer catches a Silver Lining

Lost in this past week's dismal news for 401k retirement reports (can we call them 201k's now?) is a silver lining for the consumer: this recession, like every 20th century recession before it, has created enough demand destruction to break the back of inflation. Been to your local gasoline station this past week? Odd are, you are seeing prices you haven't seen in a long time. In fact, the price of Oil per barrel is now lower than it was a year ago. Here's the graph demonstrating that truth:

Sign of the times: $.99 says they can't sell for under a buck!

While Larry Kudlow and the rest of the neo-con Kudlowites are telling you the economy is Goldilocks, reality is trying to remind us that things aren't so golden.

Sure oil is now almost at under $100, and that gas in some places now cost less than a discounted haircut. The grain complex has come off its seasonal highs, with the talk of a "crash." Hell, even the price of homes has come down to the point where folks are beginning to say the end of this deflation could end soon!

Yet, in light of all this, the general consensus is that prices in general are still on the upside. Costs across the board are still going up. And today, one of the hallmarks of cheap goods is now saying they can't even live up to their name's sake!

Manufacturing Monday: Gustave's effect on energy & manufacturers

By now, Hurricane Gustav is ravaging the great city of New Orleans and the surrounding Gulf Coast. Our hopes and prayers goes out to the good folks of the area. Well you probably have guessed, that Johnny Venom would've found the economic angle on all this. Rest assured, fellow Kossacks, I won't let you down! But once again, I do hope for the best for the folks aflicted by Gustave.

Gustave could raise the price at the pump, among other things

Would we truly be racist if we demanded "Made in the USA"?

Amazingly, in the past several months I've been called a racist 3 times, more than anytime in my life!  The first time was when the Jeremiah Wright thing broke out and I defended the guy, I was called bigoted against whites.  Then, just the other I was called first "pro-Black" then "racist against whites" because I favored Barack Obama over that walking museum piece from Arizona.  Now, today, the conservative economic blog site, Carpe Diem, is labeling people like me racist for demanding things be made in this country!

Manufacturing Tuesday or Monday part deux!

Yesterday I had hit on the situation going on with the automakers. Originally, I had intended to include some other stories, but the first piece was large enough (perhaps too large?) that I realized that I had to push the other pieces. Well, as promised, we got some interesting stuff. First on the auto front a cool piece on zero emission cars. Next we got fallout from biofuels and water preservation. Third, it seems the Chinese aren't so thirsty for the black stuff right now. Lastly could the current woes Australia's mining sector tell us something?

Hydrogen cars reach a milestone....no really..literally!

Despite recent grain crash, long term food $$ is on the rise

The contrarian in me is screaming that Reuters' recent piece on food prices is the food inflation equivalent to Businessweek's famous "Stocks are dead" headline from a 1982 issue. Yet another piece is whispering in my hear "baby, it ain't over yet!"

Perhaps it's a little from column A and a little from column B. Food prices have been going up for decades, so how is this any news that we've reached a 20 year high? The rate of inflation (the official BS one and the much higher one using the original formula) has essentially been depreciating peoples' buying power since the end of the Great Depression. Yet, it seems to me, since the latter third of the last century, the rate of growth for the price of food has been growing ever faster.

Tuesday proving Larry Kudlow and other Ayn Rand droogies wrong

For anyone whose read my pieces in the past, knows that I hold a certain disdain towards former Reagan White House OMB Associate Director/conservative-libertarian Ayn Rand acolyte Larry Kudlow. It's nothing personal against the guy, it's his ideas and economic policy objectives that I find fault with. For the past couple of months, he's been going on about this is the "Goldilocks economy." Essentially, that we're worrying about nothing because one bad economic indicator is being offset by a good one (mind you, he's often just used productivity as that one). Well today, despite his claims that all is almost well, we got some news that just proves Larry Kudlow wrong!

Ok, I will give him some credit. He isn't a Pollyanna and he has come out and said this or that has been bad or needs to get better. Still, his overall anthem is that things are really great and that we (he's quoted Phil Graham) should stop "whining."

Inflation is still there and going higher.

Manufacturing Monday: Price fixing, the big grain crash of '08 and speculators for hire?

Greetings ladies and gentlemen to the latest episode of Manufacturing Monday. Couple of interesting things to discus today, and some interesting numbers to watch this week. First we have what appears to be a new take on price fixing by manufacturers. Next we explore the recent collapse in the price of grains. Our last piece is a story from the Financial Times where companies and groups are hiring the very element that help drive up their costs, speculators, to well...sorta fight speculators. Kinda reminds me of those old westerns where they hire a gunfighter to take on the baddie. Finally, as mentioned, there are numbers we're watching, the Producer Price Index being released tomorrow, Jobless claims and the Philadelphia Fed Survey on Thursday.

Woe be the retailer who wants to mark down a product!

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