March 2010

Our Current Policy is to Beg

Our Current Policy is to Beg - Ralph Gomory

Gomory is referring to the United States response to the mercantile trade practices of China. In the piece, The Innovation Delusion, Gomory exposes the absurdity the United States can create intellectual property, advanced R&D and innovate it's way out of the trade deficit. Gomory also calls out Thomas Flat Brain Friedman, one of my favorite things to see. (I have yet to figure out how such nonsense even gets published never mind on the best sellers' list!)

Manufacturing ISM for February 2010 - 56.5%

The Manufacturing ISM index, a survey, was down from last month's 58.4% increase, but still in the black and showing moderate expansion.

The biggest news in this report is employment went up to 56.1% and the trend lines for manufacturing hiring has finally started to move upward. ISM reports this is the highest reading since 2005. The ISM manufacturing employment graph below shows anything below zero (normalized to 50, the contraction/expansion point for the ISM) is contraction and above is expansion. As you can see, we have a manufacturing hiring expansion trend line (finally) from the survey.

 

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