Word: slowdown
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...wouldn't say it's dead. Business is certainly tough. This slowdown has been, frankly, more deep and more protracted than anybody anticipated. Cancellation rates-- people canceling on contracts for homes--have roughly doubled in the past six to 12 months, to just under 35%. One thing causing cancellations is the inability to sell existing homes. A lot of these folks may not have sold a home in 20 or 30 years, so the furnishings and carpets may need to be updated [to help them sell...
...Trumpf, a family-owned machine-tool firm in Germany, has watched orders from the critical U.S. market slow significantly in the past few months. But while the housing-bled U.S. economy has been sluggish, and the dollar weak, it's all proving quite manageable. "We can feel the U.S. slowdown, but it's not unsettling. There's no crash," Leibinger-Kammüller says. Trumpf's sales of its metal-cutting machines elsewhere--to Saudi Arabia, to Singapore and especially in Germany--continue to rack up double-digit growth rates. The buoyancy of global trade "is amazing. We have to keep...
...where the end demand is coming from." Stephen Roach, Morgan Stanley's chief economist and one of the most skeptical observers of this world economic scene, has long warned about the dangers of flagging U.S. demand. Now he's concerned too about signs he sees of a possible Chinese slowdown--one reason why he thinks global growth this year will be "significantly below what most are expecting...
...will it be a "happy slowdown," as Goldman's O'Neill predicts, or a meltdown? You can have your own debate; in the meantime, here are some of the key issues...
...YANKEES What economists are struggling to predict is how pervasive the impact of this housing slowdown will be on the rest of the U.S. economy, and abroad. Perhaps most surprising, American consumers are continuing to spend, regardless: automobile purchases are sluggish, but retail sales rose by a higher-than-forecast 0.9% in December. "I'm not prepared to bet against the American consumer. That's a highly dangerous proposition," says Jesper Koll, chief Japan economist for Merrill Lynch...