The Extent of the Crisis

From the Economist:

In Germany December’s machine-tool orders were 40% lower than a year earlier. Half of China’s 9,000 or so toy exporters have gone bust. Taiwan’s shipments of notebook computers fell by a third in the month of January. The number of cars being assembled in America was 60% below January 2008.

Yes these numbers are among the extremes and other industries aren’t faring quite as badly but the core point is that this is an international crisis and it will have serious impact everywhere – goodbye to fantasies of decoupling. A Fistful of Euros has had excellent coverage of how the crisis is affecting European and other countries, things are looking bad in Russia, Ukraine, Japan, Ireland, Latvia, and pretty much everywhere else.