Written by New Deal Democrat

This morning’s report on industrial production confirms that the economy remains on autopilot, and that’s a good thing.

Overall production increased again, and the trend of rising production since spring of last year is clear:

When we break it down by manufacturing (blue, left scale), mining, and utilities (red and green, right scale), we get pretty much the same picture:

While it’s true that the manufacturing subindex is below its April peak, I am not terribly concerned. There were very volatile readings in March, April, and May, and if we smooth the readings out via a three-month moving average, July is only slightly below June, and both June and July are above every other 3-month average reading.

So the Doomers will have to move on from their “soft data/hard data” argument to something else.