Tuesday, October 05, 2010

Summer of Recovery, my butt.

August’s numbers, released a few minutes ago by the Census Bureau, continued the bad news that started in late spring with a sharp downturn in demand. New orders and shipping both dropped significantly in August, making it the third month of declines in four months...
If we keep recovering at this pace, the only sectors of the economy that will show any growth will be street corner retail pencil sales and windshield cleaning services.

19 comments:

Skip said...

Don't forget IRS Agents - that's a growing sector.

Fuzzy Curmudgeon said...

Hardware stores should do a bang-up business when rope, rails and tar are finally called for.

Anonymous said...

I have a pencil franchise opportunity for you! Just visit my website & ...

:^)
Ulises from CA

Joe in PNG said...

I'd also like to predict growth in the Federal Bureau of Pencil Sales and the United Windshield Cleaners Union.

theirritablearchitect said...

Pencils?

What will the unwashed use those for?

rickn8or said...

So why does the stock market go UP on news like this??

Tam said...

"What will the unwashed use those for?"

A half-assed replacement for charity. ;)

Außenseiter said...

@Tam

And that is news how? They keep lying and lying, but the future is a huge bust.

No recovery in sight, and foolish to expect one until, say, 2030.

This recovery is just them printing money trying to stave off the inevitable.

Baby boomers are fucking lucky, most of them won't have to live through the mess they made.

@rickn8or

They're mostly divorced from reality, that's why. Which is that before this whole shitstorm started, the vaunted US economic growth was based on too much debt, either state, consumer or corporate, and decreasing returns.
Now it's somewhere north of 330% of US GDP. Europe is fucked too, but for different reasons.

Kind of obvious, in a way.
Ask any successful broker. It's just like with sports betting. The majority don't do very well..

Anonymous said...

No, no...nothing's awry; there is a plan: "The President announced today the installation of a solar array on the White House roof and a call for at least twenty percent of all our power needs to be provided by solar; the burgeoning jobs growth industry of the...seventies?"

Oh wait, wrong press release; that was Jimmah. Reagan removed those overpriced and underperforming panels a few years later for the same reason we don't all have them on our roofs today; inefficiency. But important lessons were learned and we all now recognize that jobs growth is a result of private industry filling real demand, and the function of gov is to keep score and stay out of the way, right? Right? RIGHT?

Oh, here's the right press story..."The Obama White House today announced the installation of a solar array on the roof to..."

At the end of this bit on tonight's evening news, even Brian Williams looked weary and confused as he said "...it's as if nothing has changed...". Wow.

God help us to help ourselves before it's too late.

AT

Stranger said...

The "rail" in "tarred, feathered, and rode out of town on a rail" are the same used in split rail fences. Those will be very hard to find.

But a nice piece of 3" square steel tubing ten feet long, and kept in a cold storage locker until well chilled should do nicely.

A pair of wooden yokes (think ox yokes), padded for the carriers comfort, cut to hold the rail with one corner up would be close to Abe Lincoln's original design.

Stranger

rickn8or said...

@ Stranger

Thanks for the heads-up.
And I like the way you think.

Bubblehead Les. said...

Every time I hear Barry open his mouth and talk about how the Recovery is going so well, I flashback to the Riot scene in Animal House where Kevin Bacon screams to the crowd "All is Well, All is Well!" Too bad Barry hasn't ended up the in the same state as Bacon did.

Anonymous said...

The academic economic indicators are also interesting - no one seems to be going on sabbatical. I've been looking at the job postings and there are fewer and fewer one-year fill-in slots open. Granted, it's still early in the season, but this is quite different even from this time last year. I wonder if people don't want their departments (or Deans) discovering that they can live without Professor Z?
LittleRed1

Anonymous said...

Nathan:

Don't forget the pitchforks!

cap'n chumbucket

Unknown said...

The orations of TOTUS have led me to see him as the leading example of the non-uncommon Duckbill Platitudinous.

jimbob86 said...

Ummmmm.....

"Summer of Recovery, My Butt"?

Your ....um.... *posterior*.... was... ill?

Really, though, it will be a "Decade of Recovery", as the "rescue" portion of the call is now without hope.... this is now a "recovery" operation.

Lawyer said...

I'm sure we're just reading the numbers wrong. There's a recovery in there somewhere. If we just squint until we're almost blind, lean our head to the left, and whistle loudly as we walk past the graveyard, the recovery will jump out and startle us.

Robin said...

The White House keeps touting GDP numbers but are intentionally using old numbers and omitting the much lower revised numbers for the quarters being referred to.

That's the kind of dishonesty I guess we've come to expect from this administration.

KurtP said...

Somebody forgot to include the mandatory "unexpectedly" part.