Well, it's feeble, but it's there.
Industrial production increased 0.8 percent in November after having been unchanged in October. Manufacturing production advanced 1.1 percent, with broad-based gains among both durables and nondurables. ... At 99.4 percent of its 2002 average, total industrial production was 5.1 percent below its level of a year earlier. Capacity utilization for total industry moved up 0.7 percentage point to 71.3 percent, a rate 9.6 percentage points below its average for the period from 1972 through 2008.
Utilization, however, is scary. That's a long-term problem (see chart at the link) which has not been helped by "free trade." At ~70%, it's bite-the-fingernails time for a lot of industry; the last "good times" were in the mid- to late- 1990's.
HT: Calculated Risk
It's only scary if we continue to not put a portion of that additional capacity to use and it's only a long term problem if we let the private sector, by itself, pull us out.
ReplyDeleteBTW, the term "recession within a Depression" seems to becoming more of a possibilty as the days go bye. It's tough to put a positive spin on an uptick in fundamentals when so much is wrong in the world of global finance:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.creditwritedowns.com/2009/12/bank-collapse-in-austria-brings-debt-in-eastern-europe-center-stage.html