The Cycle Repeats (And Repeats)

Factory orders rose 2.0% in December 2016 year-over-year (NSA), the fourth positive number in the last five months. In what is a perfect commentary on the sorrowful state of the economy, it was highest growth rate since September 2014. It seems increasingly likely that the manufacturing recession attached to the “rising dollar”, the one that created a near-recession for the whole economy, has ended. The seasonally-adjusted figures show February 2016 as the lowest point, which makes sense given the timing of all the factors that went into creating and manifesting the downturn.

The problem, as always, is that having passed beyond that specific condition there is as yet any evidence that the economy is experiencing anything more than its absence. In other words, being away from near-recession isn’t the same as being on to actual growth. In that respect, what we see now appears to be far too much like 2013 and early 2014, a repeating in the depression cycle that also makes perfect sense.

The worst of “global turmoil” in late 2015 up until February 11, 2016, was about the acute interruption of global “dollar” flow which has immediate and direct impacts upon the real economy – especially in terms of goods and the manufacture of goods, both of which require constant monetary and financial resources. The cessation of the immediate threat (in terms of risk) allows some activity to resume that was delayed by the disruption. Some of that activity, however, never comes back, which is the truly insidious nature of the “dollar” depression. Like a noose, the economy is only ever slowly strangled.

In the immediate aftermath of the Great “Recession”, factory orders never hit anything like 2%; they went from -3.70% in November 2009 to +0.50% that December and then +13.40% to start off in January 2010. Even in the aftermath of the 2012 slowdown in early 2013, factory orders rebounded somewhat more convincingly, from -3.2% in March 2013 to +1.4% in April and 3.6% in May. Though orders have been mostly positive these past few months, there is just no acceleration; in order, +1.2%, -0.1%, +0.4%, +1.3%, +2.0%.