A friend of mine in the RV business, who has owned his own place for 35 years, says that his business has never dropped off as far or as fast as it has over the past 6 months. Manufacturers in his industry that have operated for more than 50 years are simply shutting down. 

Even as the nation focuses on an election and the "improving credit markets" the real economy is still spiraling downward at a fast rate.

The 45% "decline" in GM’s sales are a stunning drop-off more consistent with the worst recession (depression?) in several generations than a simple "decline".

First, check out these headlines from the front page of the Bloomberg site yesterday.  Do these look like the stuff of big stock rallies?

Even as the stock market grinds on through its bear market rally, the real economy continues to slide off its narrow shelf like a boneless chicken seeking someplace lower.

First, factory activity plunged to its lowest reading since 1982.  How significant is this?  Well, in 1982 we were in the depths of a very severe recession.  (This one hasn’t even officially started, according to the NBER, who are squirming desperately to avoid proclaiming one right before an election). For factory activity to plunge like this at the outset of a recession speaks to a very deep economic hit in our near future.

Even as the stock market stages a bear market rally, and the banks are showing some small signs of happiness with their newly-received trillions in public money, the signs from the real economy are pointing down, and hard.

Our most recent economic ‘strength’ was an illusion built on borrowing. Unfortunately, our preferred measure for our economy, GDP, counts borrowing-fueled "growth" as though it were real.

For example, if two people live next door to each other, and both earn $50k/year, but one of them borrows a million dollars and spends it all,  GDP would measure the borrower as having an economy 20x stronger than the other.

Happy Halloween! 

One of my kids is going out dressed as the queen of hearts…only the front flips open and it says in blood red inside "Your 401k – down 50%!"

We’ve already decided to split any candy that spills to ground between the kids and dad.

I nominate this for understatement of the year:

I know that the whole issue of Peak Oil seems to be on the back burner, given the financial crisis. Many think that oil demand will be knocked far enough back that even if Peak Oil were happening right now we’d have several years respite before it becomes a significant problem due to demand destruction.

So I’ve been patiently waiting for any estimates that would allow us to compare world oil production declines to demand destruction to see where we are in the oil sweepstakes race.

On the demand side, I’ve seen estimates that world oil demand will fall off as much as 4%-5% this next year.

Now for the supply side.