Chart Of The Day: Continued Collapse In Capital Goods New Orders Confirms US Is In Recession

While the just released Durable Goods orders report for October came in modestly better than expected (which many thought would be a decline due to Hurricane Sandy), the primary driver of this continues to be record durable good inventory accumulation. Excluding the noise, and focusing only on real, non-noisy economic strength metrics such as New Capital Goods Orders (technically defined as the year over year change in Non-Defense Capital Goods Excluding Aircraft), a very different and far uglier picture emerges. In fact, the October Y/Y Plunge of -8.1% in this major indicator was the biggest drop since 2009. Curious where this collapse in New Orders is in the context of prior recessions? Here it is (shaded areas indicate NBER-defined recessions). We have never had such a steep drop in Cap Goods in the past 30 years without a concurrent recession. To summarize: according to one of the...