Once upon a time, when such things as industrial production, machinery sales and construction, trade and commercial interactions mattered, today's Caterpillar retail sales, which painted a grusome picture for global manufacturing and industrial production, may have gotten more than a casual comment on page... well, nowehere really.
However, since everyone is hypnotized by a "recovery" on the back of "smart-beta" aka $10 trillion in liquidity injections by central banks, and a global "service" economy in which all tha matters is shuffling every greater numbers of pieces of paper from point A to point B and collecting commissions while clicking on FaceBook ads, it obviously doesn't matter to anyone that according to CAT the mini industrial recovery in the US has plateaued and after retail sales rose 14% Y/Y two months ago, dropped to 11% in July and to 8% most recently (blue bar on chart below), and coupled with a double digit collapse in Asia, EAME and Latin America sales (by -24%, -17% and -29% respectively), the industrial bellwether has now seen a mindblowing 21 consecutive months of declining Y/Y global retail sales.
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Putting this number in context, the 21 consecutive months of declining sales is now 2 months worse than the previos record: 19 consecutive months of declines posted starting with the collapse of Lehman.
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With fake recoveries like these, who needs all too real global recessions?
Source: Caterpillar [8] [8]
