My guess as to Chrysler is that the American public realizes on some unconscious level that Cerberus is a pump and dump operation that cannot be trusted.<\/p>\n
In real estate, construction spending was down by 0.6% from October to November<\/a>, which was better than the consensus estimate of 1.4%, which to my mind is a serious WTF<\/span> number. 1.4% a month is Sta-Puft<\/span> Marshmallow man time.<\/p>\n In central-bank land, we have reports that the Federal Reserve and the ECB<\/span> are working together to avoid deflation<\/a>, which indicates that central bankers on the both sides of the pond are scared.<\/p>\n The ECB’s<\/span> only charter is to control inflation, but now they are trying to figure out how to get inflation back<\/span> into their economies.<\/p>\n No surprise that we are still seeing a flight to safety that is driving the dollar up<\/a> against both the Euro and Yen.<\/p>\n In energy, oil is up again<\/a>, largely on concerns about the Middle East, and retail gasoline was up 1.4\u00a2\/gal<\/a>, the 6th<\/span> straight day in a row, which seems to indicate that gas prices will be rising in the near future.<\/p>\n Finally, here is a pretty picture:<\/p>\n
![](\"http:\/\/img78.imageshack.us\/img78\/7985\/ism2bmanbr9.gif\")
It’s a measure of the ISM Manufacturing index (I mentioned this last week). The graph is courtesy of