Category Archive

 NAPM sinks to 38.90 from 43.5 in September

In the last two months, business activity fell off a cliff. Hurricane Ike and the Boeing strike contributed to the sharp downturn, but the breadth of production losses across industries shows that there is a more fundamental explanation: the U.S. economy is deleveraging.

—Daniel J. Meckstroth, the chief economist of the Manufacturers Alliance

My forecast is I don’t see any economic growth through 2009. The credit crisis reached up and grabbed the throat of the global economy and choked off economic growth.

—Richard Fisher, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas

Discarding the Frame

I have of late — but wherefore I know not — lost all my mirth, foregone all custom of exercises; and indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame the earth seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o’erhanging firmanent, this majestic roof fretted with golden fire — why it appeareth nothing to me but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors. What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and in moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god: the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals! And yet to me what is this quintessence of dust?

The notional and the real