Economics Update

Click for full size

---

Business orders returning

Well, it's kind of a slow news day, as the big news was the Euro loans to Greece, but we do have another sign of a recovery, which is that business orders are on an upswing worldwide.

All in all, I think that we are truly in recovery, unless another shoe drops in high end finance, but I'm kind of expecting another shoe to drop there, causing another panic and another bailout.

The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) continues to take a conservative approach, saying that, "The determination of the trough date on the basis of current data would be premature."

This is not surprising. The folks at the NBER typically take more than a year after the trough bottom to announce that they have determined a trough date.

In energy, gasoline is up nearly 4¢/gallon this over the last three weeks, to $2.85/gallon, and it's not unreasonable to assume that it will break $3/gallon by the start of the summer driving season.

As to oil, it fell today, as and so did the dollar, largely in reaction to the Greek bailout.