I’ve been seeing it for the last couple of months and everyone has been telling me, that it’s just me or the freight I carry. I got a call from someone last night about how his general freight company was showing them slides about how freight has been on a downward slope for the last two years. The last couple of months have been the worse.

And now from the Wall St. Journal Online

In a Sea of Optimism, Why Some Forecasters Warn of Recession
By KELLY EVANS
June 25, 2007; Page A2

It starts out

Talk to just about any economic forecaster on Wall Street, and you’ll probably get a relatively upbeat assessment of U.S. economic outlook. They’ll tell you that business investment and manufacturing output are bouncing back and that housing might be less of a drag on growth, trends that suggest the worst of the slowdown is behind us.

But there are a few that realize what’s really happening.

Mr. Smith doesn’t rely on the yield curve alone; he also collects anecdotal evidence from “real people,” like business managers, analysts and workers at companies all over the U.S. He said that before he updates his monthly forecasts he speaks with nearly 100 people: “The steel experts and the shipping experts and the truck experts and the agricultural experts — you name it,” he said. Right now, he says, the real people are telling him that business is slowing. “Demand has gone down for railroad, trucking and air freight — all three. All housing companies are down. Packaging demand is down — nobody knows why — you can’t buy more if you’re not selling more boxes.” 

Now - get your conspiracy caps on! Why isn’t government or anyone else admitting there’s a slow down? Could it be that if there was a slow down in the economy there wouldn’t be a need for all this cheap labor everyone keeps trying to shove down our throats with this new immigration bill?

Or is it just me?