The Commerce Department reported on Wednesday that wholesale inventories rose 0.5 percent in August.  What’s more, according to the Commerce Department sales at wholesalers rose 0.9 percent in August…the first increase since April.  What this means exactly we don’t quite know.  But the experts have some ideas…

Yelena Shulyatyeva, an economist at BMP Paribas in New York, says it’s a sign “companies want to stay cautious ahead of the Presidential election.”  Peter Newland, of Barclays, reviewed the same report and concluded it “offered an encouraging sign that demand is beginning to rebound.”

In other words, no one really knows what these numbers mean.  Yet even if they did, what good would they be?

For the life of us, we can’t comprehend what value these numbers have.  What we mean is the integrity of economic data has become as (Read more....)