In response to my post Plunging New Orders Suggest Global Recession Has Arrived I received a couple of interesting emails from readers, one from the US, the other from an employee of the world's largest automotive parts manufacturer.

Small US Distributor Responds

Dear Mish,

I am a small distributor and sell mostly to online stores. In the past 3 weeks, our business has dropped off a cliff.

Our retail store that usually has 5 orders a day, has had 1 in the past week. I also have a customer with an Amazon store and he has gone from 10 orders a day to a total of 1 order all this week.

Moreover, I have spoken with a number of other distributors and they are all begging for business. There is a dead silence in the buyers right now.

Something is definitely happening and it isn’t good. The numbers are not showing the real depth of this. I think we may see them fall off hard in the next 90 days.

Tom