Great news kids!
Gang of 12 member, DB says “The U.S. economy may grow as much as 6 percent this year, helped by sales of consumer durables and increases in inventories.” This forecast is up 50% since last month and double the 2.60 median forecast of the Bloomberg survey. You have to forgive Deutsche Bank, they are not that stupid, it was just their turn to make a moronic bullish statement just like fellow Gang of 12 member, MS made the outrageous forecast that “Metals may gain 32% in 2010” yesterday – these are the kind of things that “THEY” must do to goose the markets over critical levles.
It is an interesting quirk of GDP that inventory builds are counted as a positive, based on the assumption that businesses aren’t stupid and they are only building inventory to satifsy coming demand trends. This is how all this G12 cheerleading can become a self-fulfilling prophesy as business owners are convinced to stock up for demand that never actually materializes. We already know that China has stockpiled an entire year’s consumption of copper and investors and ETFs are stockpiling more copper, as well as gold and platinum at record levels, all in anticipation of the RETURN of demand and now DB tells us that the US will grow almost as fast as China this year (and we all know that China is the Holy Grail of growth).
Of course a 6% jump in the $14Tn US GDP would be $840Bn while China’s projected 9% growth of their $5Tn GDP is “only” $450Bn so IN YOUR FACE CHINA – Deutsche Bank says we’re going to grow out economy at 17% of your puny economy – and don’t even get me started on India, we could have a sale at Sears that would top their GDP!
Of course the holy grail of foolish inventory building is our petroleum industry and we added a whopping 8.85 Million barrels to our already record stockpiles yesterday as demand for crude – just like the actual demand for everything else – fell off a cliff (a huge win for the USO puts I’ve been advocating for a week, by the way). Of course, like many things about this economy, it is worse – far worse, than “THEY” would have you believe. A reading of the actual EIA Weekly Petroleum Status Report shows us that refineries are still operating below their post Katrina/Rita levels (85%) at 81.3% of capacity, Nonetheless, despite producing the…
