Inventory Adjustment is Over?

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This graph shows the inventory to sales ratio. This increased slightly in May to 1.24 (SA), after declining sharply from the peak of 1.48 back in Jan 2009. This could decline further - the trend is definitely down over time - but clearly the inventory adjustment is over.

Wouldn't fit on BBi blog....

Rail Traffic

From the Association of American Railroads: Rail Time Indicators. The AAR reports traffic in June 2010 was up 10.6% compared to June 2009 - but traffic was still 10.2% lower than in June 2008

Boxer Rebellion Reprise (but this time with a different ending)

Chinese rating agency strips Western nations of AAA status

China's leading credit rating agency has stripped America, Britain, Germany and France of their AAA ratings, accusing Anglo-Saxon competitors of ideological bias in favour of the West.

Trade Deficit, Back to the Future

[T]otal May exports of $152.3 billion and imports of $194.5 billion resulted in a goods and services deficit of $42.3 billion, up from $40.3 billion in April, revised. May exports were $3.5 billion more than April exports of $148.7 billion. [May] imports were $5.5 billion more than April imports of $189.0 billion.

Click on graph for larger image.

The first graph shows the monthly U.S. exports and imports in dollars through May 2010.

Clearly imports are increasing much faster than exports. On a year-over-year basis, exports are up 21% and imports are up 29%. 

Small Biz still not hiring

From Sharon Bernstein at the LA Times: Jobs outlook for small businesses may be getting bleaker

Intuit Inc., which provides payroll services for small employers, says the nation's tiniest companies had fewer new hires last month than any time since October.
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To calculate its estimate of national hiring, Intuit uses payroll information from its 56,000 small-business customers. The company defines small businesses as those with fewer than 20 employees.

Intuit's data show that small businesses hired just 18,000 additional workers last month. That's still positive territory, but it's less than a third of the 60,000 that were added in February, when it seemed that an employment recovery was imminent. Additional hiring dropped steadily during the spring, to 40,000 in April and 32,000 in May. Another payroll company, Automatic Data Processing Inc., painted an even gloomier picture, saying that small businesses lost 1,000 jobs nationwide in June.

According to surveys by the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), the problem isn't lack of financing or government regulation - the problem is a "shortage of customers".

NFIB chief economist Bill Dunkelberg recently said: “What small businesses need are customers, giving them a reason to hire and make capital expenditures and borrow to support those activities.”

Futility of Debt

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