What you look for to judge the economy are two fold. 1. steel manufacturing and 2. Freight activity and volume

Steel looks to be sluggish as the world economy looks to struggle for sometime. It used to be that the US dominated this market so as steel went so did the US economy forecast. This is no longer the case as the US is not the dominate manufacturing giant it used to be. Today, watching the steel market gives just a glimpse of the economy rather than the whole story.

Freight is picking up. Freight carriers are hiring and expanding, Rail carriers are going hard, and small package service is building steam and hiring/expanding. This is good news!!!!!

markets to watch include Lithium mining (Afghanistan is the leading area for this expansion). Maybe this is why we are in Afghanistan as it obviously was not for Bin Laden....Unless it was for the Heroin??? just stirring the pot.

Side commentary

Is anyone paying attention? What will our children do for work? Manufacturing is gone. I think I accurately recall a recent statistic that over 40% of all income in the US is non-profit generated (Government Jobs, Entitlements, farm payments ect..) How long can this go on? Does a society not need to create wealth and have good work?

Categories: Dave's Rants