Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Again very bad news becomes positive

With the headline “New orders for Swedish industry up in July” our enemies continues to spread crap around. We are being told that New orders for the last three months (May-July) increased by 4.4 percent compared to the preceding three months (February-April).

Let’s ignore the fact that New orders for July 2009 decreased by 16.5 percent compared to July 2008, which they actually mention. Instead let’s look at another fun little side-note they also mention in the report, but I have yet to see it in Newspapers: “The increase of 4.4 percent for the last three months compared to the preceding three months reflected a 0.7 percent decrease in the domestic market and a 9.1 percent increase in the export market.” How interesting, and what does this tell you about the state of the Swedish economy?

But this little excursion into facts does not really say that much, orders goes up and down. To really get a full grip of the situation we need to look at other things going on simultaneously.

The same institute, Statistics Sweden, realized the Activity Index today 2009-09-09, which measures the activity in the Swedish economy, and it decreased in July 2009. The trend decreased 0.4 percent compared to June, which corresponds to an annual rate of almost -4.6 percent.

And yesterday they said that the Swedish service production decreased by 5.0 percent in volume and working day adjusted figures in July 2009 compared with July 2008.
At the same time unemployment is going up, interest rates are kept very low so despite much less purchasing power, idiots still are buying stuff, mainly housing which has seen an increase in prices, further getting into debt.

If you put all this together with the state deficit of SEK 200 billion, a very shaky world comes to economics, and several key factors like the possibility of a defaulting USD, what picture do you get in your head? Are things looking better? Are we seeing “green shoots”?

There is enough information out there; he who doesn’t prepare deserves whatever he gets.

2 comments:

  1. Did you see the "most competitive markets" chart the other day!? (The World Economic Forum's global competitiveness report 2009/2010)

    1.Switzerland
    2.USA
    3.Singapore
    4.Sweden

    haha, when the world crumbles the order doesnt say that much does it!? =)

    http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Swiss-topple-US-as-most-rb-3920054269.html?x=0&.v=2

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  2. Sweden is actually in pretty good shape, eh... that is in comparison with other countries...

    Singapore I get, Switzerland also, but then also in comparison. But what the hell is US doing up there? These sorts of measures are pretty useless in normal times, now they are actually damaging since one can get the impression things are not so bad.

    People are idiots and when the depression keeps going we are going to find out just how stupid.

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