US auto sales down 19% last year and that’s for smaller cars
Posted on 02 April 2011 with 2 comments from readers
US auto sales are still stuck deep in recession, even if they did show some improvement on the year before. Sales are running at an annualized 13.1 million, 19 per cent lower than before the global financial crisis.
This is bumping along the bottom. This is not a recovery, that would be something approaching the previous sales. Besides the units being sold are smaller, less valuable autos, so doubtless the total revenue trend is much lower.
Car salesmen
Of course, you can always rely on a car salesman to bend the truth. It is the same with unemployment figures that do not tell you how many jobless have been knocked off the list that month.
Wall Street has become the modern equivalent of the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s 1984 vision of the future. Or Disraeli’s lies, damn lies and statistics.
Only the housing figures continue to tell the inconvenient truth about the real depression in the US economy (click here) and Wall Street just ignores those as it did before the subprime crisis.
After the vast amounts of money printed by the Federal Reserve the economy really ought to be showing some progress. This is feeble and all that new debt will still have to be repaid somehow.
Wall Street is again living on borrowed time and the day of reckoning will have to come. Who warned their clients of the last crash?
2 Comments posted by readers:
Ed, a very timely article especially as there was an uncritical article in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph about the fall in US unemployment. Such positive things were being said about the US economy!
I read it, however, with your linked comments in my head. Still, the stock market gamblers in the current situation will doubtless trust their investment managers to have yet another go, as a result of the DT article.
I reckon stock prices in the US will rise in the short term due to earnings coming up. I reckon earnings will be good. Link below shows Ford had pretty good sales. I expect Ford shares to see some more gains this week or next week.
http://www.autoweek.com/article/20110401/CARNEWS/110409988