The optimist and the pessimist are both wrong; as the Lean thinker knows, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be. What, then, should the Lean thinker make of The New Optimism, which holds that the currently very bleak manufacturing outlook is not as bad as last quarter's very very bleak manufacturing outlook.
Today's NY Times mentions two gauges of manufacturing activity (measured by the Institute for Supply Management) that may help shed light on The New Optimism. January's rate of manufacturing shrinkage was slower than December's, and (somewhat unbelievably to this writer) new orders rose slightly. To what extent will the perception of a slowdown in the rate of the downturn create its own reality?
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