Pick up and SUV sales up for Sept.--I'm not even an economics

[pooja]

major or anything related to it.. Gas goes down, sale incentives good and GM and Ford save face for 2006.

[SheilaT]

1. Are you saying they

actually were up, or are you simply predicting that they will be?

Personally, I find that hard to believe, but then I've never been an SUV kind of gal, always preferred small, fuel efficient cars. Just recently acquired an '04 Honda Civic and I'm quite thrilled.

[pooja]

2. No, its in the USA Today (money section)... I read it in the paper.

I was lazy and didn't look up the on-line source to paste it. Interesting money section today. CEO of major home building associations cashed in their stocks about a yr ago before the housing bust. Check it out. Seems like an Enron of the bubble bursting housing market.

[ProfessorGAC]

3. They Are Up

But, just like the stock market story, it's written by people without a clue about macroeconomics.

The stock market hit a record high, but very little is made of the fact that this has occurred a "mere" 5 YEARS(!) after the last record high. This means, from a financial point of view, that the market has been depressed for 5 years, but all we see is headlines that it is at a record. By the growth curve of the prior 15 years (1986 to 2000), the DJIA SHOULD have been at nearly 16,000 by now. Where's that story?

In this story, the sales of these SUV's are up, compared to last year, and earlier this year, and exceeded the estimates for August and September. But, the overall car sales market is still down 8% compared to 2000. So, it's a statistic in search of context.

In other words, it's apropos of nothing.
The Professor

[SoCalDem]

4. And..

If you are not doing long distance driving, the additional cost for fuel will not be that big of an impediment if the price for the vehicle is low enough..

I fill my Honda once a month because I go very few places, so even if my gas cost doubled, it would not be a tragedy for ME.. If a super priced SUV was something I was interested in, I could justify buying it.. They savings on the original price would buy a lot of gas..