That ugly word "recession" is being heard in the land. On financial TV shows they talk of a coming recession all the time. The columnist Dan Dorfman says it will be worse than recession.
If times are bad, we know the auto business will suffer. In particular ourDetroit companies will suffer because they are terribly weak right now. And the new wave of layoffs indicates Detroit is preparing for a storm.
Here's the difference: at Ford, with its 16 percent of the market, a 16.5 million units year means 2,640,000 car and truck sales. At 15.5 million units it's 2,480,000. That may be the difference between selling and approaching a profit, or wild incentives to move the metal.
Are bad times coming, or are we dealing with TV hype, another "end of the world as we know it" story? Earth warming may be old hat, so do they need something else to scare us?
It's true that housing is sick and creditors are losing billions, that new construction is slack, that oil has pushed near $100 a barrel and we're paying $3.50 for 93-octane gas in the East, and $4 a gallon doesn't seem that far away. But as I write this the stock market is up for the day, oil is down to about $91 a barrel, and unemployment and all the other economic indicators seem fine.
More important to me, the best stock market predictor I know, Bob Brinker (maybe you hear him on the radio on weekends) says he sees no evidence that a recession will come despite all the scare talk by the media. Bob may be wrong, of course, but had I followed his advice for the past decade I would be filthy rich today.
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