Economics Update

Scary production graph courtesy of Calculated Risk

Industrial production has fallen for the 4th straight month, and the year over year decline is the largest since 1975, and the New York Fed's Empire State Manufacturing Survey fell to a record low, so no one is manufacturing much of anything.

What's more, the port of Los Angeles import traffic fell 27.3% year over year, so no one is buying imports either. (Note that this number does not include the port of Long Beach)

Also, the Builder Sentiment Index is unchanged, and so it remains near its record low, so real estate is still dead.

At least people are still willing to buy US government debt at reasonably low interest rates.

In energy, OPEC kept production targets unchanged yesterday, and so oil rose today.

In currency, the dollar fell on the poor manufacturing numbers.