Feeling the pinch

This BBC news audio-video clip is excellent for students wanting to gauge where the US economy is at this critical stage of the cycle. I used it to explain the difference between leading, co-incident and lagging indicators. Officially we wont know if the economy is in recession for some time because the official data on output, income and spending arrives several months after the event! But the experience of the Brooklyn brewery shown in the video is a good mini case study - they are being buffeted by the falling dollar (which increases the price of grain imported from the UK), rising world prices for yeast and hops. And by the slowdown in consumer demand. The one bright spot is that a weaker dollar is increasing their export volumes.