The Wall Street Journal is just reporting on their site, that negotiators for the Iraqi government and the US have come to a draft agreement on troop withdrawals.

For anyone whose read my pieces in the past, knows that I hold a certain disdain towards former Reagan White House OMB Associate Director/conservative-libertarian Ayn Rand acolyte Larry Kudlow.  It's nothing personal against the guy, it's his ideas and economic policy objectives that I find fault with.  For the past couple of months, he's been going on about this is the "Goldilocks economy."  Essentially, that we're worrying about nothing because one bad economic indicator is being offset by a good one (mind you, he's often just used productivity as that one).  Well today, despite his claims that all is almost well, we got some news that just proves Larry Kudlow wrong!

Greetings ladies and gentlemen to the latest episode of Manufacturing Monday. Couple of interesting things to discus today, and some interesting numbers to watch this week.  First we have what appears to be a new take on price fixing by manufacturers.  Next we explore the recent collapse in the price of grains. Our last piece is a story from the Financial Times where companies and groups are hiring the very element that help drive up their costs, speculators, to well...sorta fight speculators.  Kinda reminds me of those old westerns where they hire a gunfighter to take on the baddie.  Finally, as mentioned, there are numbers we're watching, the Producer Price Index being released tomorrow, Jobless claims and the Philadelphia Fed Survey on Thursday.

To most on this site, this isn't exactly news, as many have been claiming that the price of goods and such have been rising.  But now the dead tree press is, in a sense, making it official.

Yesterday my aunt in Arizona and I got into our usual squabble about politics and world events.  She's an nice woman, a retired nurse that sadly has drunk the kool-aid John Airbus McCain has put out.  Well today she sent me an email with the subject line "John McCain would handle Russia".  You can pretty much guess what the whole email was about.  At first I thought I would respond with highlight the usual deficiencies in neo-con foreign affairs.  Then it hit me, what's going between Georgia and Russia was indeed because of neo-conservative foreign policy!  

Greetings folks, welcome to another edition of Manufacturing Monday.  Sorry about last week, it's normally my goal to have a new edition out on the first day of the week, but sometimes life can be unpredictable and throw you a curve ball. Well, several interesting things this week ranging from manufacturing activity to California looking to gain Tesla's plants.  Plus the Financial Times reports on China dethroning the US from it's Manufacturing title.

While the media is pouring over the whole Edwards affair, Russia has been sending in military forces into Georgia.  Now I grant you, what John Edwards did was horrible, and I feel for his wife.  But the media has a responsibility to report all the news and to focus on events that will have greater impact on its viewers.

Maybe I'm nuts or unhinged or maybe I'm not. Perhaps its stress or the nerves acting up.  I need to lay off watching the news and politics.  Though something tells me I'm not gonna shake off this feeling I keep getting. Maybe some of you have felt this weird sense of dread too.