Saturday, October 2, 2010

Something Smells Fishy With the ISM

from Zero Hedge:

Digging beneath the surface of today's ISM report revealed a complete economic disaster: bad components (Inventories and Price) were up, while good ones (Orders and Employment) were down, as we pointed out at our first view of the ISM. What this implies, as John Lohman highlights, is that the "best" indicator - Orders less Inventories, plunged lower. As John explains: "Statistically, orders minus inventories leads ISM composite by 3 months (i.e., the highest correlation is at lag 3).  Even when smoothed 3 months (slowing it down), orders minus inventories leads EPS estimates, and below 5 typically means a peak or plateau (and by definition therefore a slowing growth rate) in earnings estimates."

We are now well below 5, and looking at historical precedents, the market is now certainly due for a correction, which would definitely occur if the Fed would finally leave the economy alone for at least one second. But no, as Jim Grant earlier stated so eloquently, the Fed is now "lethally" ingrained in all sorts of intervention and manipulation of the US economy, and the only way the two can separate from each other is through the implosion of either, or both. And since the parasitic Fed is far more powerful than even the host country it has invaded for the past 97 years, we have a bad feeling it will be left standing long after America has been brought to ruin.