Thursday, September 17, 2009

The Auto Rebound... Now What?

More on yesterday's industrial production jump. The power of government intervention (i.e. Cash for Clunkers). St. Joe News with the details:

Industrial production rose in a fairly broad-based pickup in August, according to the Fed data. The central bank also said production jumped 1 percent in July, twice as much as originally reported. Car manufacturing drove that gain.

Factory output — the single-biggest slice of overall industrial activity — also rose for the second straight month. It posted a 0.6 percent gain in August, following a 1.4 percent rise in July.

Auto production led the way, rising 5.5 percent last month due mainly to the government’s Cash for Clunkers program. That followed a whopping 20.1 percent gain in July.



It will be interesting to see the figures for September.

Source: Federal Reserve

4 comments:

  1. mfg production ex-autos is up 2.1% q/q annualised and the y/y number is stabilising. There is more evidence of 'distortion' in retail sales than IP, cf. the seasonal adjustment factor and comments from ICSC that back-to-school sales moved from Jul to Aug.

    ReplyDelete
  2. this was meant to be less of a comment in overall production (my post on that yesterday was that i was surprised to see the breadth of the strength) and more related to autos and what can happen (i.e. a HUGE jump) when the government intervenes.

    what happens after the government is gone will be key.

    ReplyDelete
  3. http://www.autoobserver.com/2009/09/september-on-track-to-be-years-lowest-for-car-sales.html#more

    This will give you a pretty good idea of where we are heading...

    ReplyDelete
  4. what happens when the govt is gone [ie clunkers is finished]? see france for a template.

    ReplyDelete