Industrial production, capacity utilization rebound

From Bloomberg:

U.S. industrial production rose more than forecast in October, led by a jump in mining as work resumed at oil rigs in Gulf of Mexico following shutdowns caused by Hurricanes Gustav and Ike.

The 1.3 percent increase in production at factories, mines and utilities followed a revised 3.7 percent drop in September that was the biggest since 1946, the Federal Reserve said today. Excluding the effect of the storms and a strike at Boeing Co., output would have shrank about 0.7 percent in October and September, the Fed said.
...
Capacity utilization, which measures the proportion of plants in use, climbed to 76.4 percent from 75.5 percent the prior month.

I have been suggesting that September and October may have been awful in large part due to the hurricanes' effect on production, and the Administration's "Panic NOW!" demand on consumers in order to justify the Wall Street Bailout.

This is evidence that while the recession deepened, industrial production may have bungee-jumped rather than cliff-dived. We'll have to wait for November's data to get a better picture.

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Hurricanes

I really question this, really. The hurricanes during last season simply do not compare to 2006 when we didn't have even close to these numbers.

They also did not hit major industrial areas. Where is this coming from, the shutting down of the offshore oil rigs for 3 weeks or so?

I have a very hard time believing it would cause such a drop.

wait a minute

I got different numbers for my cap util numbers. Where are you getting yours? I could be wrong on my figures and need to know to make corrections.

Click on the bloomberg link.

That's where I got the numbers.

OMG I'm stupid

I can't believe I didn't see that link not to mention you said "Bloomberg"!

Here's where I got my info

Econoday is where I usually get my info for Manufacturing Monday.  The link also takes you to my Capacity Utilization numbers.

Probably a data revision

The official Federal Reserve report is here

The capacity utilization number did go up, but September's number was revised, so possibly the "unrevized" number was actually the same. You'd have to go back and check last month's official report to find out for sure.

BTW, the Fed's report also discusses the issue of the impact of the hurricanes that Rob Oak questioned.

page won't load

I don't know what is going on here, but I am, for some reason, having page load errors on .gov sites!

Now this is making me paranoid, but in the interim, can you upload the federal reserve report as an attachment so I can see it?

I don't care what they say, that big of a drop over hurricanes just intuitively does not make sense, those were not major hurricanes.

Here's the actual report

For release at 9:15 a.m. (EST)
November 17, 2008

Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization

Industrial production increased 1.3 percent in October after a downwardly revised decline of 3.7 percent
in September. The revision to September output resulted, in part, from a larger estimate of the impact of
Hurricanes Gustav and Ike on the chemical industry. Manufacturing production, which dropped 3.7 percent in
September, rose 0.6 percent in October. The output of mines advanced 6.1 percent, as most crude oil and
natural gas operations in the Gulf of Mexico were brought back online after the hurricanes. The output of
utilities rose 0.4 percent.

Industrial production in September and October was substantially affected by the hurricanes and a strike
in the commercial aircraft industry. Excluding these special factors, total industrial production is
estimated to have fallen around 2/3 percent in both September and October. The hurricane-related
disruptions, which are now estimated to have been larger than previously reported, lowered the change in
total industrial production in September about 2-1/2 percentage points, and the return to operation in
October of most of the affected facilities boosted the change in output about 2 percentage points. The
strike in the commercial aircraft industry reduced industrial production 1/2 percentage point in September
and an additional 0.1 percentage point in October.

At 107.3 percent of its 2002 average, total industrial production in October was 4.1 percent below its
level of a year earlier. The capacity utilization rate for total industry rose to 76.4 percent in October,
a level 4.6 percentage points below its average level from 1972 to 2007.

Market Groups
-------------

The production of consumer goods increased 1.3 percent in October. The output of durable goods moved down
2.1 percent, while the output of nondurable goods rose 2.2 percent. Among consumer durable goods, the
index for automotive products dropped 3.6 percent. The production of appliances, furniture, and carpeting
fell 1.1 percent, and the output of home electronics edged down 0.2 percent. The output of miscellaneous
goods declined 0.7 percent. Among consumer nondurable goods, the production of consumer energy products
jumped 6.9 percent, as the output of gasoline and distillate fuels recovered after the hurricanes.
Non-energy consumer nondurable goods increased 0.3 percent. The indexes for foods and tobacco and for
paper products moved higher, while the indexes for chemical products and for clothing decreased.

The output of business equipment fell 2.2 percent in October. The production of transit equipment, after
plunging more than 30 percent in September, fell an additional 10 percent in October because of the effects
of the strike in the commercial aircraft industry, which concluded around the end of the month. The index
for industrial and other equipment moved down 1.7 percent, partly because of declines in construction
machinery and in office furniture. The index for information processing equipment edged down 0.2 percent
after a decline of 0.9 percent in September.

The output of defense and space equipment increased 1.0 percent in October after having fallen 2.0 percent
in September; military shipbuilding had been curtailed in September by the hurricanes in the Gulf region.
On net, output in October was little changed from its level 12 months earlier.

Among nonindustrial supplies, the production of construction supplies decreased 1.1 percent in October,
partly because of drops in construction steel and in architectural and structural metals. The index for
business supplies rose 0.7 percent but was more than 4 percent below its year-earlier level.

The output of materials gained 2.3 percent in October. The ongoing recovery after the hurricanes in
natural gas and crude oil extraction contributed to an increase of 5.2 percent in the production of energy
materials. The production of durable materials dropped 1.7 percent, with declines in all its major
components. The production of nondurable materials rose 4.6 percent after a drop of 8.8 percent in
September. In October, the index for textile materials fell 1.0 percent, the index for paper materials
declined 0.7 percent, and the index for chemical materials increased 10.6 percent. The gain in chemical
materials followed a drop of 15.8 percent in September. Large decreases in organic chemicals and plastic
resins contributed significantly to the September plunge. Although the drop for organic chemicals was
mostly hurricane related, only a portion of the drop for resins was attributable to the storms.

Industry Groups
---------------

Manufacturing output rose 0.6 percent in October after a decline of 3.7 percent in September. Excluding
the effects of the hurricanes and the aircraft strike, factory production is estimated to have declined
about 1 percent in both months. The factory operating rate stood at 73.8 percent in October and was about
6 percentage points below its 1972-2007 average. The production of durable goods industries decreased 1.8
percent in October, with declines widespread among its components. In addition to a particularly large
drop in primary metals, which was due to lower production of iron and steel, decreases also occurred in
most other durable goods industries. Only the index for electrical equipment, appliances, and components
moved up. The production of nondurable goods rose 3.1 percent after a decline of 4.5 percent in September.
The results for its major components were mixed in October. The output of petroleum and coal products
jumped 9.9 percent, as refinery output recovered from the post-hurricane levels. Gains were also recorded
in food, beverage, and tobacco products and in chemicals. However, the indexes for textile and product
mills, apparel and leather, paper, printing, and plastics and rubber products all declined.

The index for other manufacturing (that is, industries formerly considered manufacturing but not
classified as manufacturing under the North American Industry Classification System, or NAICS), which
consists of publishing and logging declined 0.4 percent in October, its tenth consecutive monthly decrease.

Capacity utilization rates at industries grouped by stage of process were as follows: At the crude stage,
utilization recovered 5.5 percentage points in October, to 85.6 percent, a rate 1.0 percentage point below
its 1972-2007 average; for the primary and semifinished stages, utilization moved back up 0.6 percentage
point, to 76.5 percent, a rate 5.7 percentage points below its long-run average; and for the finished
stage, utilization declined 0.6 percentage point, to 72.7 percent, a rate 5.0 percentage points below its
long-run average.

this is f**king amazing

I'm doing some investigation and it's true, Verizon is filtering me going to all US .gov sites. I just traced it out. Why the hell they would block an individual going to all U.S. .gov when I am a U.S. citizen is truly bizarre. Is this China?

no my good man

this is Verizon. A friend of mine works for their mobile phone division, customer service. He gets calls all the time about how their internet seems to "not work" on certain sites.

ah

This is much more complex. I have Charter, which I finally got through to corporate escalation and the domain is alter.net, which I traced out and is owned by Verizon Business Global. They are running a filter blocking my IP address. Now why is a very good question and why any geolocation IP address, which is originated from the US they would block is beyond me. This is any *.gov US data site.

I noticed it starting a couple of days ago.

Why would any IP address be filtered from accessing public domain government statistics, data sites?

I am not a hacker and as far as I know all of my systems are clean. It's possible that my IP address (Which is owned by Charter) was spoofed by some Chinese or Russian hacker at which point Charter better give me a new one, but these are officially dynamically allocated IP addresses.

At least I have Charter tracing it out, which was a 2 hour adventure in phone calls and we'll see.

I'll bet the address was spoofed, but now I'm checking out to make sure I'm not a PC zombie in some DDoS attack next.

getting weirder

Well, I'm now monitoring all of my network traffic and there is no zombie DDoS attack or anything like that here so ...
if anyone hears of Verizon blocking access to U.S. government sites and so on, let me know in email.

That's just incredible.

My IT crisis

I think I've figured out and yes Verizon is clearly evil. It appears they didn't like my use of some global DNS servers and were blocking them completely. I had a Charter as a back up and I do this because these DNS servers are way faster plus Charter tries to redirect you to their silly web pages but if you bypass their entire DNS, they cannot do that.

Of course as usual Charter's DNS was dead 100%, they had moved them once again to new IP addresses. (Do they think everyone just allows DNS servers to be dynamically assigned those putzes!)

Still, it's pretty clear Verizon is blocking all sorts of ranges/blocks of IP addresses, now even DNS servers to particular sites and considering that both campaigns plus some government sites were hacked recently, this might be their pathetic attempts versus creating a real secured system. Why should Verizon get to manage any of our government's network with that kind of bogus stuff is beyond me!

What's really creepy is they had an IP address block because I went that route to figure it out so they must be even temporarily blocking IP addresses simply based on their DNS in a look-up. Either that or Charter partially got some of these problem released either.

Than you Verizon for your paranoid blocking and filtering. You wasted my day trying to access my own government's public statistics and legislator's press releases.

Can you imagine someone who is not a techie trying to figure this out as to why suddenly they could no longer access any government website?

Hit My CT button and I know all about Verizon and their censorship stuff, including their fight against net neutrality.

Something tells me....

that this is a tip of the iceberg, RO. You just may have discovered something big.

I think so

It seems Verizon likes to block things in the past. There is an issue of security going on. What China especially is up to everyone ignores and a lot of DDoS attacks, hacks originate from China and one can spoof and IP address.

Techies with Plenty of Time Doing Many DOS Attacks - Guess Where

The Pentagon has had several million DOS attacks all originating in Asia. Guess who? This is one of a number of many reasons why I use open source.

- Trickier to write the hacks

- Less hacks

- Apache Server with 256-bit cipher strength - that's
decmial(79).

Like the moveon.org ad with little Alex. They will hack everything else but they can't have Alex (my machine).

Burton Leed

Burton Leed

This isn't a PC/Client issue

This is a network issue where Verizon is blocking certain DNS servers, recording the IP address and doing a temporary block on that IP address as well, simply for using that particular DNS server.

But yeah, DDoS, cybersecurity is seriously ignored in the U.S. and it's clear China at least is almost using our networks for some sort of military training exercise. It's really scary and it's especially scary how DC., probably because they are technically and mathematically oblivious, many politicians are not taking this seriously enough.

A Huge Exposure: Unencrypted FTP, and Wireless in General.

I had a client who got hacked a while back. I suspected Asian
hackers. The client used unencrypted FTP. This can be a huge exposure because unencrypted text flows over IP.

A sniffer on the right line can capture anything. On a wireless connection it is even more dangerous because few go through the trouble of encrypting the connection.

The entire nation of Estonia was crippled by Russian hackers about 2 years back. Ruskies resented a take-down of statues of Stalin and Felix Drzensky.

Burton Leed

Burton Leed

WPA/WEP cracked

You can download an app to crack it from sourceforge.

But this issue isn't a packet sniffing one at all.