Two thirds of industry does not expect orders to grow and the third that do, does not include food, beverage, wood products any many purely consumer products. Some will be as a result of the clash for clunkers and some appears to be linked to improving fortunes for China.

Perhaps more worrying is that many manufacturers think their customers are under stocked. This I think is more of a paradigm change in retailers thinking rather than a reality. This links into the 95 percent of manufacturers who expect to hold the same or less inventories.

On employment then the number of firms expecting to cut employment has reduced, yet it is still higher than those who expect to take on more workers which has moved slightly but is still in the basement.

It is interesting that prices are expected to rise and I wonder whether this is an expectation of more pricing power or that the dollar will fall. Price increase expectations also look anaemic for most consumer related goods.

The backlog of orders has not really moved at all apart from a few (5 percent) expecting things to remain the same rather than decline. Most businesses expect imports and exports to remain the same as well.

No sign of any V shaped recovery here yet.

The recent real estate “upswing” quoted by many seems so. A June-August uptick in home sales is a normal and expected seasonal swing. US gas consumption also normally rises from Memorial day (May 25) through Labor day (first Monday in September) during the summer driving season.

As you know I am highly suspect of green shoots figures. In light of surrounding figures (CRE, unemployent, trade, etc, etc) and the trillions of US dollars dumped into the economy – artifically and temporarily making up for a shortfall in consumer and industry demand – I see no light at the end of the proverbial tunnel yet and find many of these stats more of the old “lies, damn lies, and statistics” bit than reliable data points to form a summary.