by Lee Adler
Wall Street Examiner
Last week we reviewed the US industrial production (IP) and saw that it contracting for more than a year. The IP indexes represent the production of factories, mines, and utilities in unit volume, not dollar sales, both by total output and output by industry. While these indexes do not represent service industries directly, they do indirectly because electric power production and distribution feeds service business.
The IP indexes give us a pretty good idea of how the US economy is performing overall and by industry. Let’s just say it’s not the picture of health. The industrial production data includes breakdowns by industry and sector which can tell us a great deal more about the state of the US economy. It’s worse than the headline writers would have you believe. I promised in the report last week to illustrate some of that data for you.