Some characteristically bearish thoughts from David Rosenberg of Gluskin-Sheff this morning, riffing on yesterday's two big numbers: housing starts and industrial production.

First on industrial production, which was generally regarded as a good number:

A seemingly positive economic report was the July industrial production report, which blew away consensus expectations, coming in at 1.0% MoM versus 0.5% expected. Production in the manufacturing sector rose 1.1% on a spectacular 9.9% jump in motor vehicle production.

Here’s why we called it a “seemingly” positive report. Remember that July has been a strange month for seasonal factors, especially related to the auto shutdowns (GM kept most of its plants open this year and the government’s seasonal-adjustment models don’t account for this). We saw wild swings in the weekly initial jobless claims partly due to seasonal-factor adjustments (claims dropped by 10% in the first two weeks only to increase by 10% in the third week of July, to give you a sense of the volatility).

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