by Wolf Richter
Wolf Street
Without any real end in sight. That’s what’s different this time.
On the surface, it was the kind of report that has been dogging the US economy for a while.
Orders to US factories for durable goods dropped “unexpectedly” – as the media put it – by 2.2% in May from the prior month, on a seasonally adjusted basis, according to the Commerce Department. “Unexpectedly,” it seems because orders had risen 3.3% in April and 2.0% in March, and the trend henceforth would be upward. But instead, it was a broad-based decline, with some real doozies.