How The Fed Killed Growth And Mugged The Hamburger Instead

Yesterday it was reported that US industrial production rose in April for a fourth consecutive month, and owing to a jump in auto assemblies was up 1.1% from March and 6.4% versus prior year. So the usual suspects were out beating the Wall Street tom-toms about economic strength and no recession on the horizon.

But as demonstrated in the chart below, what we are mainly getting once more is born-again production, not net growth. That is, remove the April 2020 Lockdown swoon and scroll back to the interim high in December 2014 and what do you get?