A look at manufacturing, earnings
TEXT OF INTERVIEW
JEREMY HOBSON: Now to the analysis of Julia Coronado, chief U.S. economist at BNP Paribas. She joins us live. Good morning.
JULIA CORONADO: Good morning. How are you?
HOBSON: Very good, thanks. And let me ask you first, this industrial production number from the Federal Reserve. It says production is down slightly, just 0.2 percent in September, after a slight uptick in August. What’s behind that number? What do you make of that?
CORONADO: Well really we’re seeing the manufacturing sector cool off quite a bit. It was an early driver of growth in the recovery, which is typical. And now it’s settling back down to a slower pace. I don’t think this morning’s number is disastrous, but it does highlight that the manufacturing sector is not going to be the driver of growth going forward.
HOBSON: Manufacturing sector’s not going to be the driver. What about the numbers from Citigroup, they look good. Hasbro the toymaker looks good, Halliburton as well. Also people are expecting Apple’s earnings are going to be pretty nice later today. How do you make sense of that?
CORONADO: Well, we are continuing to see relatively good earnings numbers from these big corporations. And I think one of the things that that highlights is even though we’ve seen growth, it’s pretty sluggish in the U.S. These are globally diversified companies and a lot of their revenue gains do come from overseas operations. So what we’re seeing is the relative health of the global economy reflected in these U.S. company earnings estimates.
HOBSON: Good to be global. All right. Well thank you Julia Coronado, chief U.S. economist at BNP Paribas.
CORONADO: My pleasure.
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