Mind the Gap

There’s always a silver lining when you’re talking about money — and not just because you’re talking about money. Read:

The U.S. trade deficit narrowed in August, as consumers curbed their spending on imported goods, a government report showed Friday.

The nation’s trade deficit narrowed by 3.5% to $59.1 billion, the Commerce Department said.

Overall imports were down 2.4% for the month. Imports of autos fell to their lowest level since March 2005.

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Things should look even worse — better? whatever? — when September’s figures come out.

For our giant-ass trade partner China, they couldn’t have picked a worse time to try and break into the US auto market. Chery and the rest ought to wait until at least 2010. The good news for China is, their economic growth now relies more on internal demand than on exports to the US, so they shouldn’t hurt too much. And who knows — maybe we’ll even be able to export something to them, other than US dollars.

ALSO: I expected oil would drop well below $100 before long — but not quite this quickly. Not even OPEC can close the taps fast enough to make up for falling demand, plus those $140 prices were purely speculative. So I should have known better. In any case, falling prices have already been helping home sales, and surely falling oil prices will help the economy recover, too.

No need to panic, folks — this is how stuff works. Unless Washington decides to help more. In that case, invest in gold and mattresses.

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