[steve8714]

Too many regs, uncertainty about the availability of electricity.

[expat_panama]

Top 'o the morning and the adventure continues with futures predicting stocks stalling (-0.03%) and metals falling -0.62% --maybe because that's what they all were doing yesterday.   We'll see if today's Factory Orders offers more of yesterday's ISM stat.  News:

Tougher Rules Can't Fix Broken Banking Culture - Clive Crook, Bloomberg
How Investors Should Prepare for Rate Hikes - Chuck Jaffe, MarketWatch
Is August a Month For Investors to Take Cover? - John Kimelman, Barron's

[nhwingut]

All related to record low labor force participation. Which is tied to record low home ownership levels. Which is related to low manufacturing levels and record low GDP.

Less people working. Means less of everything related to economic output.

But don’t worry. The unemployment rate is at 5%.

[SpeakerToAnimals]

Has anybody noticed a decrease in truck traffic on the interstates? It is way down along the front range in Colorado. The drop in truck traffic started about a month ago.

[TheCause]

Bring forth CEO Trump.

[Diana in Wisconsin]

Closing coal plants will turn that right around! *SPIT*

[lurk]

Except for makers of ammo. Full speed and falling behind.

[The Sons of Liberty]

Manufacturing Is Mired In Low Gear, Seeking Momentum

A federal dictatorial communist agenda is not an atmosphere that engenders expansion or growth.

[Jim Noble]

Make America great again.

[Popman]

Capacity utilization, which measures slack in firms' equipment use, hasn't breached 80%, the threshold at which they are commonly expected to need to invest in equipment, since early 2008. As productivity has stayed depressed, firms haven't needed more equipment...

If companies aren't investing in or spending capital expenditures, they aren't hiring people...

If they aren't at or near 100 % capacity that means the employees are not at 100 % utilization...

That's why companies are asking employees to do two or three people's jobs...instead of terminating them...

If they quit lots of people looking for work...

This administration runs the economy soviet style...command and control instead of free market...

[tet68]

The problem is that government has not allowed business
to get into low gear, if it did business could soon
power out, instead by heaping regulation after regulation
on top of the small producers, government expects the
economy to lug along in third gear below the power band.

Guess they just don’t understand capitalism, or maybe
they just hate it??