By Daniel Downs
It appears no one is being a good consumer nowadays. Not only are retail and service consumers holding on to their nickels and dimes, but so are industrial consumers.
The latest report by the American Association of Manufacturing Technology (AAMT) revealed consumption of industrial technology goodies was down 60 percent in 2009.
The shining bright in the midst of the black lagoon of recessionary consumption was the Midwest region–Ohio included. During the month of December, the Midwest was the only region posting real dollar increase in spending. Good ole’ consumption of metal cutting technologies was up 19.4 percent while consumption of metal fabricating technologies was down 4.8 percent. Total real dollar manufacturing technology consumption was 14.1 percent, according to the number crunchers at AAMT.
I can just smell the hot cutting oil burning. Ahhhhh!
Unfortunately, the rich aroma of oily production was only smoking up the Midwest during December. This fortuitous event may have been the combined result of both the automaker bailout by Congress and Obama’s stimulus, an effort to make his own light shine upon the hill. According to the AAMT, however, the total year-to-year consumption was down by 65.4 percent, which was more than any other region in the USA.
So where do place the blame for the depressing downturn of industrial consumption? Was it solely caused by bureaucrats on Capitol Hill? Greedy bankers? The lovers of money printing at the Federal Reserve? Or just a bad case of gas caused consuming to much manufacturing technology? Maybe it was a combination of the aforementioned causes?