There's been plenty of jibba-jabberin lately about so called "green-shoots" in the economy that will lead us into economic recovery. One need only look to the latest capacity utilization numbers, an unfortunately under appreciated piece of data:
Across the board, even utilities, capacity utilization is in percentage terms at record lows. Even the crude level of processing started in acceleration in declines recently.
In the land of economic theory, capacity utilization and inflation are closely tied, with high capacity rates leading inflation. Certainly all time low utilization rates are indicative of deflation. Oh yeah, and the CPI came in today at negative 0.1%, which in reality understates deflation because of owner's equivalent rent malarchy in calculating home prices.
Also worthy of consideration are job losses that do not seem to be losing steam and U-6 unemployment (more close to reality) over 15%. There are in reality, so many green-shoots to refute and so much growing negative news and data.
Green-shoots are for the weak of mind.
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