NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. manufacturing activity was surprisingly robust in September as new orders jumped in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, while August construction spending rose at a record rate, data released on Monday showed.
The Institute for Supply Management said its monthly indexes of manufacturing activity for September was 59.4, well above average expectations of a drop to 52.0 and the 53.6 level seen in August. However, ISM cautioned that the jump was primarily driven by demand following the hurricane, which devastated the Gulf of Mexico coast at the end of August, and that the impact likely would be temporary. "The flurry of activity and the strength of new orders -- I don't think that is a business cycle issue, that is an event-cycle issue driven by the storm," said Norbert Ore, chair of the ISM business survey committee.
"Surprising" then "expected", but of course this is an accurate representation of reality. But let's see if this holds up across most of the reporting of this number that Bushco will finesse for points as more and more of their own personal nightmares collapse. Isn't it obvious that one of the factors in making manufacturing look really strong in this drive of spending $200 billion of the tax payers money to rebuild large sections of the Gulf coast region, that in fact for more than a decade, the US manufacturing base has been obliterated by offshoring and outsourcing most of the processes to the cheapest labor markets. Combining dramatically increased gas prices with the actual need to rebuild infrastructure requires US based manfacturing. This isn't something too difficult to comprehend; our trade imbalance is so disastrously extreme that were we to actually continue to try to outsource the production we would truly destroy our economy.
