[central_va]

Let's take steel, we are number 4 and China produces 8 times the amount of steel we do. Looks we wnt down 17% in 4 years

Rank Country/Region 2007 2008 2009 2010 Crude steel production (million tonnes):

                   2007   2008    2009    2010
—	 World	1,351.3	1326.5	1,219.7	1,413.6
1	 China	494.9	500.3	573.6	626.7
—	 EU       209.7	198.0	139.1	172.9
2	 Japan	120.2	118.7	87.5	  109.6
3	 USA  	98.1	 91.4  98.2	 80.6
4	 Russia	72.4	  68.5	60.0	   67.0

[SomeCallMeTim]

http://www.worldsteel.org/statistics/statistics-archive.html

If you check out the stats on here for 2011, you'll see that steel production in the US ROSE from 2000 through 2007.. from 90 to 98 million tonnes per year.

yes... in 2008, it plummeted.. to 58 tonnes. We had a little financial collapse.... you might have noticed. But, it's been coming back strong since then. ALMOST, back to where it was.. pre-crash.

But, steel is not everything. Check out chemicals...check out spirits! (Whiskey production is WAY up!)

Over the past FOUR years.. yes, many things are down. But, over the past TEN years.. (your original point)... MOST industries are still UP.

[PGalt]

Thanks for post #95. Very interesting stats.