Green Shoots

The news about green shoots in the economy are now old. And a lot of talk about green shoots may have helped consumer confidence for a few days/weeks. But now the green shoots seem to have withered like the gardens in New England after many weeks of almost non-stop rain.

As I have said earlier (http://smitaworld.blogspot.com/2009/03/what-keeps-me-awake-at-night.html), the first sign of economic pickup is normally an uptick in manufacturing. But here there is a small technical problem.

And that is - since the US has lost substantial manufacturing capacity, it remains to be seen how this manufacturing uptick will transpire. With continuing job losses and our inability to put the stinulus $$$ to productive usage right away, the recovery does not seem as imminent. Shall we see the green shoots of manufacturing uptick in China (and other manufacturing nations) and if so, how that trickles down to benefit US is a big question mark.

Stay tuned...