On Sat, 02 Feb 2008 10:03:19 -0600, "David R. Birch"
wrote:

Rich Grise wrote:
On Tue, 29 Jan 2008 18:14:02 -0800, cavalamb himself wrote:
...
In related news,

New home sales lowest in 7 years - down 21% from last year.

Fast Food sales are way down. McDonalds says it may be the economy.

Where I work is a fab shop - machining and welding, and we're swamped
with work.

Cheers!
Rich


Same here, we LASER or waterjet cut, form and weld. We're looking at a
couple more 'jets and hiring brake operators and weldors. We've had to
extend our quoted lead times and other shops local to Milwaukee are
saying the same, as much work as they can handle. But you wouldn't
believe it if you read business section of the local fish wrap.

David
================
IMNSHO the problem seems to be that there is no longer *THE* U.S.
economy, but it is still reported that way. Rather a group of
U.S. economies now exist, some of which are closely linked to the
global economies, and some of which remain mostly isolated.

Changing economic/financial factors may affect these separate
economies in very different ways, for example the dollar exchange
rate. A low dollar exchange rate will depress the import
consumer economy because of the increased prices, while improving
the export sector because of the lower external prices.

The media has much of the responsibility for this as it appears
they assume that banking/finance and the bond/stock markets are
*THE* U.S. economy and devote almost no space to coverage of the
other economies such as manufacturing, agriculture, etc. Even
the housing crunch would be ignored except for the
sub-prime/CDO/SIV debacle and the resulting hit on wall street.

To be sure these "economies" interact, for example it may become
difficult for a booming manufacturing sector to obtain additional
[conventional] financing because of the [largely self-inflicted]
bank/financial panic. The correct response, again IMNSHO, is to
seek unconventional financing, bypassing the traditional
banks/lenders, rather than rolling over and playing dead.